001Good morning everybody. >> Good morning. Good morning. I believe we have a quorum. So we're going to go ahead and get kicked off. As soon as the budget team is ready, we'll go ahead and get kicked off this morning. So welcome to our very long work session today. I'm excited to start with our budget committee of the whole. For those who are not aware, the budget committee is actually a committee of the entire board. So, we're going to start our work session this morning with a meeting of the budget committee with our budget fiscal forecast. So, um I would like to go ahead and turn it over to Dr. Reid to introduce the team and and go from there. >> Thank you, Miss Seismoreheiser. And um we're thrilled to be able to launch our budget
002presentation. And I will turn it over at this point uh to Miss Burton, our chief finance officer. My comments prior to Miss Burton introducing her team and beginning would just be to talk about how important uh budget is, right? Uh the budget is the foundation of everything we're going to be able to do as a school division and well-resourced divisions are able to provide uh for their students and subsequently our community in ways that um systems that are less resourced are not able to. So um this budget conversation is one of our most important honestly conversations and one of the most important bodies of work we're going to engage in this year. So, I appreciate the care and the thoughtfulness that the board has in this um and appreciate our community's attention to this topic
003as well. So, Miss Burton, if you'll introduce the team and share our forecast documents, I look forward to a a thoughtful conversation this morning. >> Good morning. Um again, I'm Lee Burton, CFO, and I have with me the budget director, Alice Wigington, and assistant budget director, Matthew Norton. Um and um Lisa Hall is also here with us because at the end I think we have a slide on the budget communications plan. So if you can go to the next slide. You know as you all know if you you've done this before um this presentation um provides a preliminary fiscal forecast um for the school operating fund for the fiscal 27 budget. Um it includes early projections for key financial areas that drive our budget development and it's prepared in conjunction um with the county um
004for the fiscal forecast discussion at the joint meeting on December 2nd. The potential expenditures, I say this every year, but it's important to say it again should not be interpreted as a recommended budget change or what the superintendent's proposed budget might include. Of course, there are commonalities. Um, but you know, we're still a couple of months from from delivering that budget. We'll get better information, better data along the way. So, this is truly a very early preliminary forecast. And it's also worth mentioning again that the Virginia Code section 22.1-92 mandates that the school board prepare a needs-based budget for um school for the upcoming school year. Next slide. Um we thought it would be a good idea to just remind you all of what the what reductions that we had to take um in in
005the current year um for fiscal 26 that those required difficult decisions and we reduced the budget by 121.3 million and that included renegotiating the collective bargaining salary uh proposal delays in planned investments adjustments to staffing formulas including class size across all school levels But we did allow um schools to carry over an a greater amount of funds to mitigate the impact of the staffing formula adjustments. Next slide. You know, we still are in an environment of a a great deal of uncertainty. Um you know, I'm I'm hopeful about the federal government shutdown, but that ain't over yet in my opinion. Um, we also of course continue to have concerns regarding the future of federal grants and the impact of course on federal funding on on the Commonwealth. Um, chronic state underfunding um was evidenced by
006the joint legislative audit and review commission in 2023. Those um funding deficits still exist. Hopefully, many of the JARK recommendations will be implemented given the new leadership in the governor's office. Next slide. So given the economic uncertainty, the forecast con uh considers no new resources and departments were encouraged to repurpose existing funds for programmatic needs. The fiscal forecast is a base level budget that requires compensation adjustments um per the collective bargaining agreement. uh enrollment, student needs, benefit rate changes, pensions, um health care, and then contractual rate increases. Next slide. We don't we don't we don't normally get a county transfer money until like December 1st, the day before December 2nd. Uh and we don't try to project that for them. that's um that's within their lane and not ours. And so we always have to
007be decided there. So we have assumed no increase. Um although increases over the past few years have ranged between 4.6% and 6.8%. State revenue, we're assuming a 17.3 million increase based on sales tax and a projected LCI change offset by projected enrollment decreases. And then federal re revenue we're just assuming that to be leveled there wouldn't be any change. So the total projected revenue change at this point in time is 13.2 million. And again typically at this stage we have very little information about potential revenue. Next slide. So just going into a little more detail about the um required expenditures for this very base budget. Um, we have step increases. Funding for step increases, which are merit increases based on qualifications and experience, is included. The last one that was provided was in fiscal 24
008market scale adjustment of 3%. Uh, this provides a percentage increase applied to salary scales to keep pace with um rising crosses and and the market. And each 1% of MSA equates to 31.6 million. the um FCFPSA collective bargaining unit. Those negotiations are incomplete at this point in time. So that is to be decided. We do have some benefit rate changes. Um it's this um preliminary forecast assumes the impact of health and retirement rate changes for ERFC. VRS rates will not be known until December and there are no rates changes currently for FCERS. Enrollment and student needs shows a savings. Um we received enrollment projections recently and we are still running calculations for special populations. So this number represents classroom teachers and other general staffing. So this number this decrease will may go up, it may
009go down once we complete um or refine our uh calculations for special education, ESL, those kinds of things. And then contractual um in includes escalations that we already have in place in contracts um renewals, leases and um expenditure changes that were that have recurring costs that were approved at quarterly reviews. So the total required expenditures are projected to be 193.8 million. Um and just again this bears repeating that education is a very labor intensive enterprise with 89% of the budget funding salaries and benefits. So even if we try to do a very base level budget the the any labor intensive in industry is going to require greater resources for salaries and benefits as a result of that. Next chart. This table reflects the salary increases by category staff have received historically. This chart is always
010in the approved budget. A step increase reflects movement on the pay scale based on merit, experience, and service. A market scale adjustment is a percentage increase applied to salary skills intended to maintain pace with rising costs. And a scale implementation is a targeted pay range for a subset of employees typically based on a market study. I think it's you know if you look at this chart you know it immediately jumps out that in fiscal 26 we gave five and 6% 25 4% FY24 we gave 7.22% and FY23 we gave 6.68%. And those sound like large numbers, but you should be aware that over the last four years, the state initiated a total of 18% in salary increases. Now, for 23, it was 5%, 24, it was 5% plus 2% on January 1. In 25 it
011was 3%, in 26 it was 3%. And if you add all that up, it's a total of 18%. But you all have heard me talk about before, they the state only funds our salaries based on a, you know, basically 20% and 80%. So for that 18% state salary increase, the state kicked in 108 million and the local increase was 432 million. So once again, I don't believe the state is doing their share. Um, next chart. This shows the master salary comparison uh against seven pure divisions. And we are at 102.5% of the market average minimum, 97.1% at the market average mid, and 94.3% at the market average maximum. We rank second of eighth at the market minimum, fifth of eight at the market mid, and seventh of eight at the market max salary level. But
012this ranking has improved so so much over the last couple years because it was our intention to be able to compare well with our market because as you all know we're all competing for brand new teachers coming out of college and being able to say that we pay the most or we're near the top is very valuable to get those new teachers to come work for us. And so you should know that at the minimum level at MAT step one in fiscal 24 we ranked seventh of eight divisions in the rankings. In fiscal 25 due to um what we put forward and was funded we moved up to rank five of eight and in fiscal 26 the current year we rank two of eight divisions. So in three years we have gone from seventh of
013eighth in beginning salaries to two of eight in beginning salaries. So we made great progress there. Next slide. This shows our gap and yes the projected gap is 180.6 6 million. But the thing that jumps out to me is that last year the gap at this point in time that we proposed at the fiscal forecast was 275.3 million. So we we have reduced that number by just putting together a base budget at this point in time that's nearly a hundred million less than what we requested last year. Next slide. You all have heard this statistic before. 85% of the fiscal 26 budget focuses on instructional programs. And that includes, you know, special ed, instructional support, adult ed, of course, elementary, middle, and high. Then we have support programs, which is defined as transportation, facilities management,
014general support, central office, and that accounts for the rest. Each 1% of the overall budget for instructional purposes is 33.3 million. And for support programs, a 1% is 5.9 million. Next slide. You all know the community has grown to rely on programs and services that differentiate FCPS from other school divisions. Um here are examples where we exceed the minimum state standards. um activities and athletics, advanced academic resource teachers, applied behavior analysis, preschool autism, uh enhanced staffing, assistant principles, and class size. And then other programs are college and career specialists, elementary art, music, and PE, uh special ed lead teachers. All of these areas are areas that we are going to have to look at in the event that we do not get funding because these are the areas where we fund positions and support in
015excess of what is required by the state. Next slide. And just to give you a graphic of kind of what we're talking about, um, this shows FCPS staffing beyond the SOQ. And an average school at FCPS has plus six administrative and front office staff than is required by the SOQ, nine teachers, more than is required by the SOQ, three and a half classroom instructional aids, and two specialists. So the average school has 20.5 positions that we fund that are over what the standards of quality require. And another reminder, Jay lot determined that all Commonwealth school divisions, all 132 of them, collectively spent 6.6 billion more than the standards of quality. And now I will turn it over to Miss Seismore Heiser who's going to talk about schoolboard member priorities, etc. Thank you and thank you
016for this detailed presentation. Um, just to set the stage a little bit before we go into priorities. This is our first fiscal forecast. Obviously, a lot of information is not yet known and still being known, but it's a way to set the stage. It's our kickoff process. Um, based on the work session we had in the spring after our last budget, the team has been working very hard on a budget communications plan, talking points, handouts, and a website. So, um, Miss Young Blood Hall is here to answer questions about that as well, but you've seen some information come out about that in the last few months. Um, so you're welcome to ask Miss Young Hall about in the communications as well. And I've I have asked for talking points based on this slide for the
017board members to have going into our fiscal forecast and our joint meeting. Um, so just to go on to talk about schoolboard member priorities, as you may know in the governance manual, and this is the same process we used last year. I've not changed anything, but the governor's manual requires um that we work with the superintendent that the budget com budget chair and vice chair work with the superintendent and assistant superintendent to gather and consolidate school me schoolboard member budget priorities. So in the process of that last year, we sent out if you recall a Google form for you all to share your priorities. We are asking because we're the entire division is aligning our work to the strategic plan. We are asking, but you're not required to align your priorities to the strategic plan.
018And as you'll see in the form that we'll send out later this afternoon from Miss Dixit and I um same as what was sent out last year, there's a spot for you to list your priorities and how which goal goals it may align to. And at the bottom, there's a spot to kind of list whatever you'd like to list. All of that will be consolidated into an Excel spreadsheet and shared with Dr. Reid. Um we're asking for you to have those turned in by December 5th. So after the board discussion today, if you can go to the next slide, please. >> [snorts] >> So, as you can see, this is the governance manual charge for the budget chair and vice chair to work with the superintendent, assistant superintendent to gather and consolidate board member priorities.
019So, we'll be gathering those priorities. So, after the discussion today, we'll send out the um Google sheet. All those results will be in one document. We're not going to change anything you said. We're just going to put them all in one Excel spreadsheet to consolidate them and share those with the superintendent as she develops her budget. Um, did you have a question, Miss Lady? I just was curious um given slide 16 slide 12 with proposed cuts is it makes sense for us to perhaps also weigh in on those. I mean, last year I listed all my priorities, right? Well, with all due respect, none of them came to fruition, right? I mean, other than high academic standards, right? Like, but other things related to school counselors or other things that may be important to me.
020So, I'm just wondering because we're looking at probably a deficit. Um, should we be commenting on slide 12 so you get board input on the potential things that are listed here? >> I mean, absolutely. So in the form that were that was developed last year, there's a section at the end for any other comments you want to list. So you're welcome in that section to share your thoughts on that. I'm happy to put a thing on the form about what you feel is more important to save or to fund as well. But we were really going off what the governance manual required, which is just to collect the priorities. But so I would suggest that on that last part of the form, which is kind of any additional comments or priorities, you're welcome to list
021on there. Please save these. And even in the budget priorities, you're welcome to say, I don't want to add anything new, but I want to make sure that we protect X, Y, and Z. That could be a priority also. >> And also, if we're going to have to cut, this would be my priority of where to cut. >> Yeah. Before you cut here, here, and here. >> Yeah. Priority doesn't have to be what you want to add. It can be anything that's a priority for you when it comes to the budget. Whether it's protecting a position or this is a position that I think we could cut. However you want to phrase it, it's really up to you in that documentation. All we ask is that if you would like to align it to a
022strategic plan goal, but yeah, in this era of the budget, it is hard to add additional priorities and I appreciate the staff, you know, talking about that, but you're welcome priorities to list it however you want, whether you want to comment on slide 12 or comment on what you'd like to see focused on. Good question. Thank you for that question, Miss Lady. Um, so that will be sent out to you later today from look out for an email from Miss Dixon and I around that and then I'll turn it back over to the budget team to talk about the budget question process which also is has not changed from last year's process which I think worked pretty well and we got some positive feedback on it. So I'll turn it back over to the budget
023team. >> Yeah, the U budget question process it's it's the same as exact as last year that they'll be your budget questions can be submitted using a Google form. Uh schoolboard members and board of supervisors are allocated five priority one questions on a rolling basis and then priority two questions will be answered afterward. Um access requires signing into a fcpschools.net net account. And after this um meeting this afternoon, we you'll receive an email with a link for the fiscal 27 um budget question Google doc and you can submit any questions there and we'll get them answered as quickly as possible. >> Thank you. [clears throat] And then the budget communications plan. Um thank you. Can can you hear me? Okay. So, um just briefly, I think everyone received uh information on the B budget communications
024plan. The update on that um is that we will have uh the website go live after the work session. Uh toolkit links will be distributed following work session, the talking points, uh the slide decks and one pager. uh and then content will be added regularly that includes videos uh and more one pages whatever is necessary. Um so that that is the update at this time. >> And then the final slide is um the calendar and so the upcoming dates December 2nd the joint meeting um the governor will release their budget on December 17th the introduced budget superintendent releases on January 22nd in February or your work sessions in your public hearings. and then the county executive will release his fiscal 27 advertised budget uh on February 17th. Great. Um so with that, we'll go ahead
025and turn to questions. Again, just as a framing, this is our preliminary fiscal forecast with just the kind of a setting the groundwork for where we are in terms of our budget realities, the budget this year, things that um we've fund, you know, some just background information about what we're looking to fund, what is the SOQ, what's above the SOQ. So, I will then turn it over to questions and we'll start with Miss Marin, followed by Dr. Anderson. >> Good morning. I had some questions about some of the slides. So, if uh our clerk team could please help with pulling them up as I ask. One of them is a slide six about the transfer situation. So, I just wanted to clarify something that was said. The first bullet talks about an increase that range
026between 4.6 and 6.8%. It seems like there's a mix of talking about dollars and percent change because we know there has not been an increase in the percent transfer. So, can we please get really clear about what that's saying? The county transfer percent was not level last year. We're assuming the county transfer will be level, which is a poor assumption to make. Uh we need to learn from last year. We cannot guarantee that it will be level. So can you clarify is it mixing the percent transfer and the actual amount because if I look at it that that statement is not correct from what I understand. >> Well the reason that we're we're we're not forecasting the county revenue is because we're assuming at this point in time as we always do at the fiscal
027forecast that the county transfer would be level. meaning we would get exactly the same amount that we got in the current year because we don't have any data upon which to do projections for the county transfer and they probably would have a problem with that anyway. >> Um >> well if you look at the count county transfer increase yeartoyear fiscal 26 county transfer compared to fiscal 25 fiscal 25 compared to fiscal 24 the final numbers that county transfer has increased from 4.6% 6% to 6.8%. >> Okay, I I understand that, but it is complex. We're we'reaving the percent change of aotted money to aotted money, but we also talk a lot about the percent transfer. So, do you see how it can be confusing? So, I have this sheet of all of the past transfers.
028I have this sheet of all the past transfers and the dollar amounts. And we can see that those are this is conflating two different things. And it needs to be clear. We need to talk about apples to apples. Amount of transfer, percent of transfer. If you I'll leave it at that. Um, for that point, if we go to slide eight, please. Um, Miss Marin, if I could I think what you're talking about is the percentage of county funds that are coming to FCPS. And you are correct that the percentage of funds has eroded over. >> Can you go back to slide six, please? Excuse me. So here's my concern and I'm going to show it on slide eight and slide nine. If a member of the public looks at this, it does not look like
029we are being underfunded and that's a problem. And the bigger point I want to make is the communications plan is right now. It's every single thing we put up in public and it's how we talk about the budget. It's not some talking points we're going to get after this meeting. This is a story and the story this is telling is that we've gotten more money. So, it's really hard for me to advocate for more money when it's stated that way. I'd like to show on slide eight a similar thing. I'm so glad that it was stated that the state requires a match. That data is not anywhere on this slide. That's a problem. Please arm us with the information and make it more compelling. Just like that Jark data that shows that big gap. Give
030us the visuals. Tell that story, please. On slide nine, same thing. Well, if you look at SL at our minimum, we're doing well. But if you look at our maximum, we are very behind. So, help us tell this story better to the public that says we are competitive. Just clearly the message is we are competitive at hiring new teachers. We are least competitive at retaining experienced teachers based on our salary. And I also do would like to know where the mid number is on our FCPS. I'm not sure why that's blank. Thank you. I'll take a go back, please. Any comment back before I go to Dr. Anderson? >> We'll fix the chart. That's Yeah. I'm We'll fix it. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. >> Yes, thank you. Um, a comment that I want to make
031before I dive into my questions is I am appreciative of having this discussion so that we can be more prepared so that our community can be more prepared for whatever we end up um happening in May because we already had heard somewhat from the board of at least from Brian Hill um back in September that there are no additional dollar new dollars for us. I mean there was a whole Fairfax story about it. So minimally Dr. to read. I appreciate the opportunity to have a thoughtful, planful conversation um with this difficult budget year. Um one of the things that I want to talk about, this is slide four, where we are hoping that there would be some additional funds coming from um the um from Richmond, from the state, being that we will have a
032new governor very soon. One of the things that I want to make sure that is clear, additional funding from the state will not be untethered. Correct. It will always be 20. We will always have to have a match. Or is there a pot of money which could potentially be untethered? Can you speak to that, please? Now, Dr. Anderson, you know that I resist speculating what a group of elected officials might do because nine times out of 10 I would might maybe be wrong. Um, so I'm I cannot speculate what the general assembly or the new governor might do. But I can tell you that all of the literature that was put out by the Abigail Spanberger says that funding public education is the is her top priority. >> Right. Having said that, what I'm trying
033to say, if that were to happen, our LCI will be applicable to any of those additional revenues. Yes or no? Assuming they do not change the formulas with which they allocate funding. Correct. >> So, if we receive various increases, it will always be that we have to offer an 80% match to it. That's what I'm trying to make sure we are clear about. If they don't change any of the formulas in which they allocate funds, then that would be correct. >> And frankly, I don't see any space for that to be changed this year because there hasn't been a lot of movement on that, no matter how loudly the Northern Virginia region has screamed about it. >> Right. Well, like one of the things is the fact that they use a um weighted average for
034one of the JARK items was that they push down the salary assumptions that they make and that's one of the reasons why we get such a small amount on the compensation because their salaries are higher than you know a lot of people and I raise this because I want to mag manage expectations because several years ago when governor then Governor Norom brought forth 5% % for staff. We could not match it. So, we were not able to take advantage of the 5% because the monies that were available locally only allowed us to take advantage of 2 to 3% at that time. I just want to be sure that that's part of the conversation, right? If they decide to to throw out the how they calculate the salaries and use the actual average, then we would
035absolutely receive more than the small amount that we receive currently at least for compensation. >> Thank you. Slide six. On slide six, um you have the federal revenue transfer at zero. Can you speak a little bit to that? the the only federal revenue that um is in the school operating fund. All of the other federal grants are in the uh grants fund. So it's only IDEIDA and Carl Perkins that are in the operating fund and we have just assumed that that funding is going to remain level meaning the amount of our grant award in fiscal 26 is going to be exactly the same in 27 because with you know as it the the broad and sweeping um edicts from the federal government still do not have enough detail for us to be able to predict
036what they might what the fate of those grants are um for school divisions. Um currently we're we're just receiving greater scrutiny in our reimbursement requests in the current year, but the money is flowing. It's flowing um a little slower than normal because of this additional scrutiny that VDOE is is placing on air grant reimbursements. Um, but we we are receiving funds that we were promised when we were, you know, prior to all of the federal government stuff. >> Okay. Well, no, I'm glad to hear that. Um, one of the things that you talked about here as well under the state revenue was being offset by enrollment decreases. You said that a little bit too quickly. Can you give more detail? >> Yes. air um enrollment is um reduced from um the previous year and or
037the year that we're in currently. what we've seen is the actual enrollment um September 30 is is less than was projected and the there will be an impact on state revenue because many of the state line items are funded based on ADM um which is enrollment with except for prek it's K12 and so we would expect to see a reduction in state revenue that's allocated on a per pupil basis due to the enrollment loss. >> Thank you. And Dr. What is our September 30th enrollment? >> Please stop my time. >> Look that up and get that to you. I think we are >> not my time. [laughter] >> I said it before and it just kept on going. You owe me about eight seconds. >> Please give Dr. Anderson 8 seconds back. I know we
038are down about 1.5 to 6% somewhere in that area. And I think um I'll get the exact numbers for you, but I think we're somewhere between 177 and 178, but we continue to grow over the course of uh the year. Um so we continue, you know, to add students. We're um down a bit from last year. Like I said, uh over 1% somewhere between 1 and 2% and we'll get you the exact uh numbers. >> Thank you. I would appreciate that. Um this is now slide seven. On slide seven, the expenditure categories that are articulated here for the step increase in MSA, these will be applicable to all employee groups. For the purposes of this preliminary um fiscal forecast, we did include all groups in those cost calculations. Um but you should know that the
039only group that is sitting out there is the PSA group and that's about 1,400 people. So it's a very small piece of >> PSA group. >> Um principles, supervisors, and administrators. >> Thank you. I didn't know we had a new acronym. >> FCFPSA. Thank you. And one more question regarding this is on slide eight. I'm not sure how to um calculate some of the things that you shared. You mentioned about a 6%. Did you add the step in the MSA in that presentation? I I didn't follow where you were going with that. Yes, I just added the step and the MSA together to see what kind of salary package we provided in 26 25 24. That's all. That's all. >> Thank you. I'll take a go back please. >> Thank you. Go back. Uh Miss
040Anderson followed by Doc Miss Lady. >> I just wanted to to say again that last year we did have an increase related to some of the JARK advocacy that was outside the LCI. Correct. So the support cap related to special education was outside the support cap. So there are or outside the LCI. So there are possibilities that would relate to funding that would actually be real dollars that would show up for us um that I think that we all can can spend some time to learn more about and advocate for. Um I also know we are currently in an rebenchmarking year. Correct. >> Yes, we are. >> So in theory the LCI is going to shift just slightly. That would would provide benefit to the division. That's correct. Um, going back to the discussion that
041we were talking about on page on slide six, I just want to reiterate one more time that 100% we did not receive the county transfer that we requested last year, but we did receive an increase in the county transfer. And so I understand what this is trying to aim for is giving us an average over the last four years of what we have received related, but the request is always going to be different than what we've received. We also have to be mindful of the fact that as things like um the bond increased that is the debt service is part of the overall transfer rate. So as we're advocating for more bond transfer or things like that that does impact the amount of real money that we have in the operating fund as well because
042it's all one pot of money. So I just want to make sure that we're kind of all level set that we did receive an increase last year over what we had received the year before. Um, and I think this is some of the frustration and the tension that's happening between us and the board of supervisors that I want to make sure that we're clear about moving forward is that yes, we did not receive the full transfer that we requested, but we did receive an increase over what we had received the year before. And so we I think continuing at this moment um Miss Burden, we talked um before this presentation about the fact that there's a possibility that if we saw some increases from Richmond this year that there is very real there's a very
043real chance that the number the scary number that is on the the next couple slides um it isn't quite as scary. And so it's more doable when we're talking about the fact that we are going forward with a very simple needsbased budget based on exactly the needs that we have. Um and if we can continue to advocate for the state to increase some of that funding as well, then we're in a very real position where we could meet our obligations. Um which is I think all of our intention related to the CBA and everything else. So, I just want to advocate again that I do not want us to continue down the path of being in direct conflict with our largest funer. I think that it's extremely important for us to be working carefully and
044closely with the board of supervisors to get what we need and have them fully understand what we're trying to do here. Um, and so I that there's no there's no new money in any of this and we're we're just trying to meet our obligations. So, I think that's that's an extremely important point for us to focus on. Thank you, Miss Lady. >> Yeah. Um to piggyback on a little bit of that, um I think on slide six, it would be beneficial under the county transfer bullet if we just included both, right? The percentage of the budget that we get from the from the state, I mean, I'm sorry, from the county. Um, and if you're going to do the past four years, then the percentage is listed for the past four years because yes, while
045there has been an increase, the part of the pie that they're keeping on their side is increasing much higher than ours. Um, and I and I understand and I think that the public understands everything costs more, right? Everything costs more. Um, if we can go to slide eight for a second. Um uh and I think it's here when you were talking about the um the uh 18% increase in the state um and the fact that they contributed 108 million to that and we had to come up with $432 million. Can we put that on here? Uh just like when the state quote says we're going to give everyone $1,000 bonus or whatever they called it last year. Um, and I remember listening to one of my delegates um at a public uh meeting state that
046that the governor told him that would cover all of our employees and I had to pull him aside afterwards and correct him on that because of our SOQ. So when they say we're giving every teacher a thousand, it's not because that cost us money, too. Um, and then if we can go to slide nine. Uh, I just need to make the point here because people don't really understand that that while we're recruiting well and while we are close to number one in starting salary, um, I am tired and tired of watching our veterans walk out the door to to another jurisdiction. I don't think our public fully comprehends that what it costs to train up new people and what it how painful it is to watch your best and and forget your best. I mean,
047we we are we are robust. We have great people. If they've been here 10, 15 years, they're fantastic. And because of the top of our scale, they're leaving us. And and we can't emphasize that enough. So, I don't know if we've got any data points on the on where people who are leaving us are not retiring, but I think that's an important point to be made is that that that's why that number matters. Um, and then finally, just because I have to, um, on slide 12, we got to get college career center specialists off of that slide. Uh, I'm going to tell you that when I was a director, there's a point in time, well, there were several points in time when I was without my college career center specialist. I mean, you you you
048you've got to be resuscitated. I don't think that we understand I don't think that people fully comprehend the volume of work that goes through that office. And I don't and the skill sets that those people possess. So, I'm talking about 26 people in the county. It's not going to be a big item, but I am very strongly emphasizing if we're going to talk about collegegoing culture, if we're going to talk about course taking patterns, if we're going to do all these things, we've got to have that position filled. And quite frankly, at some of our largest schools, we need two. >> Thank you, Miss Lady, Mr. Moon, followed by Miss St. John Cunning. >> Thank you, Madam Mr. Chair. Uh, thanks for the presentation. [clears throat] I [snorts] have a few questions to ask. I
049am going to start with page 12. Did I understand you wrong? Uh that you would be looking at everything on this particular chart as we continue with our budget work in terms of coming up with a potential budget reductions if we have to make reductions. is that >> this chart was included in the um the discussions about the approved budget last year when we when we you know were it was conveyed that we would need to cut our budget by $120 million. Um and this is just a list of where we exceed what the SOQ requires. So at this point, you know, certainly these are some areas that we are we are looking at um to see, you know, how far over are we over the SOQ, those kinds of things. But, you know, none
050of that analysis is is ready for prime time, nor has any decision making been ma been had that would identify whe which one of these things or if any of these things would be reduced. >> So when do you expect to start any work on looking at any of these items? Are you waiting until board gives you further directive to look at certain areas or is the staff gonna on own start looking at these? >> You know, we work very closely with the superintendent in putting together the proposal for the superintendent's proposed budget on January 22nd. Okay. Um but until we know what the actual revenue is, which for the state, you know, Governor Yncan will introduce his budget on December 17th, there may be a distinct difference in the budget that is that we
051end up with based on the general assembly's work and um Miss Bamber. So, we probably won't know that until crossover as far as what they might. And so, in order to decide whether we're going to have cuts or whether we're and what we are going to cut, we first need to know what the revenue possibilities are. And at this point in time, we don't have any information on the revenue possibilities. >> And when is the crossover? I think you showed a timeline on page 19, >> third week of February. Mr. Mallaloy >> third week of February >> February you know what I'm trying to avoid is a repeat of last year making significant budget changes at the last minute and I was really hoping that we had more time as a board member one board
052member or 12 of us as a collective body uh given a more more more thought to the ultimate decision we made. So without uh with my desire not to see what happened last year happen again this year, I'm really hoping that uh you know superintendent staff will start looking at whether share the information publicly or or you know somehow just just to keep it yourself for the time being. I gota you know work has to start earlier than waiting until two weeks before the decision to be made. Uh with that said uh I am going to go to a okay let me let me ask this question with the slide number 12 along with 11. Is any 11 is sort of pie chart? Uh, is any of what I see on page 11 not reflected
053on page 12? Page 12 should be looking at the items on page 12, they seem to be coming from everything on page 11, correct? >> Yes. Yes. I mean, we in in all of the schools, we exceed the SOQ >> um in our instructional staff, our you know, leadership, all of that is funded somewhat by the state. Um, and all of that is is part of, you know, what we would be looking at. >> So, if you're looking at everything that is on page 12, you could tell public that we are looking at every program, every part of our budget. >> Yes. >> Okay. And with $190 million, I mean, it's very early at this point in time. additional expenditures. Our budget will grow to be about 4.2 billion next year. >> Yes. >> So
054what's the increase in the percentage wise? >> 5%. >> About 5%. >> Around 5%. And $180 million of gap if that is divided by property tax of $31 million per cent. Correct. That is about six cents. >> Yes. >> I'm trying to anticipate the argument. >> Yes. Although, you know, typically when the county executive, you know, steps out with the fiscal forecast in on December 2nd this year, um the only thing that we see in the county transfer um assumptions is the um reassessments of property, not a real estate tax increase. We we usually do see though what is I mean essentially re rebenchmarking of um housing in Fairfax County and I don't know where that's headed right now but I can tell you that LA in like last year at this time um what
055they stepped out with was about 130 million increase um due to reassessments um of which you know about half 50% about 65 million would come to us. And again, this was on December 2nd, you know, very, very early. The year before that, there was about 157 million increase due to reassessments of which half was about 78 million. So, historically, they have assumed, you know, reassessment increases that are revealed at the fiscal forecast that are outside any decision to increase real estate taxes. >> It's fair. Uh since I only have a 14 seconds left, I'm going to ask one quick question ask for go back is looking at the I forget the I think it it is um boy expenditure reductions adjustments is any turnover or vacancy included any of the items on page seven. What
056is the part of enrollment and student needs reduction of 41 or $42 million? It is not included um at this point in time because our um attrition has slowed over the last year and we are not looking at increasing the laps and turnover numbers at this point in time. Uh in fact we may have to decrease them slightly from our assumptions and as you know those are negative numbers in the budget. So if we decrease it that's an ad. Um but we're we're still looking at that but we have had um very little attrition in this past year and so that is impacting those numbers and that's why you don't see it here. Um, one other thing I wanted to mention that also recall that the county initiated a meals tax uh in this current
057year and their um estimate of what that might bring in was $60 million um for in the first year, but that was just for a half of year, six months period. um that 60 million is probably high in light of the environment that we're in currently, a lot of federal workers in Northern Virginia. So the assumption as to what the county might receive in a half year, this current year um for meals tax is probably going to be less in the future. That 60 million number is probably too high. But even so, there will be recognition of a full year's mills tax um in the next year. And so we should see some increased they should see some increased revenue there >> even though they made any they have not made any promise to share
058any part of that with us. Correct? >> Not. >> Okay. Thank you. Could I ever go back? >> And just as a reminder um Mr. Moon you can share those priorities in that document I'm sending which Dr. E will have. So that's one way to influence that list is to share the priorities so that the team is aware what the board priorities are. Thank you. Um next we have Miss St. John Cunning followed by Mr. McDaniel. >> Okay. So, um going to to slide 11 and I know you've got this all broken down. What I don't see broken down here and I know it's probably baked into some of this are the services for our multilingual learners and students with behavioral or social emotional required support because I know we have very robust services that
059we provide to those students. Um, and I don't know that we have the numbers, Dr. Reid, when we talk about maybe a slight decrease in enrollment, but there's an increase in students that need special education services or other services that do require more specialist or more funding. And I think if we could get those numbers, it's important in the story that we tell because we do know that people move to Fairfax County specifically because of those services. And I think we're missing a very important point when we tell that by not telling that story that we may have less students, but we have more students that require these services and people specifically move to this county for that. and then also showing the success we have had with supporting some of our multilingual learners that
060then go on to perform higher than our native speakers. So when we're talking about this budget and this story, it's not just about numbers, it's about people and it's about the fact that we require those specialists that have that training and the investment that we've been making. So I just wanted to put that point out there. Um I'm glad to hear that attrition has slowed. Um but I will tell you that because um so I really so that is probably my request and my ask that we tell that story and get those numbers out there. Um because we have set the bar so high in terms of SOQS. We're already hearing from parents that, you know, why are there not more teachers even though we have been exceeding the SOQ requirements, but we've set the
061bar so hard high that that's already an expectation. And so that's something else that we have to keep in mind when we tell this story that we have made this investment. We are in tough budget times. Um and and really that's kind of my only comment, but I would like to see um the differentiation between even though there's a decreased enrollment of students, what is the increase of students that require special supports across the board in in very many different areas? [snorts] >> Thank you. Um Mr. McDaniel. >> Yeah. Um on slide five, there's a comment in here on the second bullet saying that uh this forecast only reflects the base requirements. So can I interpret that to mean that we're not adding any new programs in this proposed budget? >> No. Oh, in the
062proposed budget, um I don't know. You know, we don't want the fiscal forecast to usurp the superintendent's proposed. >> Let me rephrase that. Does the fiscal forecast add any is is the forecast to add new programs or not? >> No. Gotcha. >> It does not. It is the very basic what we can get by with based on the CBA enroll what we know about enrollment. >> Okay. All right. And then um slide 12 where we're talking about SOQ and what we do kind of above and beyond so to speak. And then the same thing into slide 13. Um it would be helpful to have some dollars attached to these various lists of items so we can do calculations based on that. Um not urgent but having some of those numbers would be good. And just
063a general comment I mean and maybe I'm going to be a little wet blanket here. I don't subscribe to the notion that we're underfunded. I subscribe to the notion that the funding is imbalanced at the county level and our county taxpayers are consistently being asked year-over-year to pick up the tab because our tax dollars that go to Richmond aren't coming back in a way that is not putting pressure on our local homeowners. So I want to be I wanted to put that out there because you know if we go back and look historically the last time we had 177,000 students was 2011 2012 school year and that budget was $2.2 billion and this forecast is projecting a $4.2 billion budget. We have money we have had increases of budget year over year over year. Um
064so I I I I don't subscribe to this claim that we are underfunded. I do believe Richmond needs to do a better job. We we've had that discussion. We've been beating that we've been beating that like a dead horse for months if not years now. So, I I do agree with that. Um and then slide 13, you know, when we're talking about what we're going to have to cut back because there are going to have to be cuts and reductions. There's no way around it. Um 13 provides, in my opinion, the framework for where we start having that conversation. Um because it's be above and beyond what the state requires us to do. None of the state requirements are all that in a bag of chips, but that's where we have options is on slide
06513. I mean, 20 and a half positions per school, which is what that calculates up to times 200 schools, that's 4,100 positions. I'm not suggesting cut 4,100 positions, but I'm saying what positions are going to be the least painful cuts that would impact the classroom. And that's what I'm going to be looking at through this budget process. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Um, seeing no others, I'll have Miss Dixon take a turn, then I'll take my turn. We'll go to go backs. >> Thank you, Miss Burden and budget team. Uh, for this presentation, um, I I just want to pick from where Mr. McDaniel said about the the the cost of the cost of living has significantly increased from back then to now. Um, I think everything is like 40 50% more. uh day-to-day
066expenses have gone up and as uh expectations from the staff. So I think that's discounting inflation and all I think that numbers kind of matches. Uh I I do understand that there's a significant reduction in the ask um you mentioned from $275 to $180 million $695 million. Uh what does that kind of break down? Where does savings come from? in dollar-wise if you have numbers >> largely it's compensation uh remember that we had a a much larger compensation assumption I think it was at 7% uh at the time we developed u the fiscal forecast last year um I also think that um at that point we did know about health care rates and they were going up significantly um we didn't have many initiatives um beyond the very basic enrollment was also expected to go
067up. Um especially I think it was the special education population that required additional staffing. Um so it was those kinds of things. It's people. It wasn't new new programs or uh new initiatives. It was mostly compensation benefits. It's just it was a higher cost then than it is this year. >> U Thank you for that. And uh I and I I believe we are already going with the very basic budget. So uh that's everything is at the basic minimum the the percent increase even for colola. Um I actually wanted to just mention that on the list of on the slide 12 there is obviously lot of positions for principles assistant principal teachers but there is some things called with cyber security and safety and security um and that's on the you know list of over
068SOQ's I think the services these are very important things I think just few days ago Manassus Park city public school got you know ransom attack or they got they had to shut down the school for a day imagine the inconvenience to our families and our our students and the whole staff uh everybody if it had to happen to FCPS. So I would I would just be you know very careful about that and that at no point we can put our guards down because the cyber attacks are happening to every government entity right now and there are foreign entities and other people who are trying to get into our systems. Um, same thing with security. Uh, it is really important for our students to feel safe and I would not like any cuts in that area
069and that would be one of my budget priorities and I put that uh uh my questions in. Um, so uh lastly I will say uh the the central office lot of time we are being asked to reduce the size of our central office reduce the the the cost. Could you give us an amount of like what's the percentage of I think it's there in a slide maybe I'm missing it but in compared to other jurisdictions how much I think we used to have a slide of that if you could how I think we have less staff budget for a central office as compared to other divisions yeah we haven't completed that we usually get that kind of information from the wavy guide which is not completed yet for the current year so that's something that
070we're looking at to see how we benchmark to other divisions, but we don't we don't have any data yet. We've not completed the analysis. >> Okay, I'll we'll wait for that. Thank you so much for the your everything. Thanks. >> Thank you. And I will just take a quick [clears throat] turn. A couple things I wanted to mention. First, since this is such a sour budget year, I did bring some sweet milky donuts for everybody. So, there's some back there if anyone wants one. Um they're small, so but they're mighty. Having said that, you know, I I appreciate the hard work. But I wanted to lift up again what we're talking about with this fiscal forecast. What's listed here is really what we are required to spend between meeting our obligations to the collective bargaining
071agreement and just the change of cost of benefits, right? And the change of cost of some of our contracts that we have to maintain um and obviously the change in enrollment which is still coming in some of those numbers. So this may change, but we really did hear our taxpayers and our board of supervisors in saying that this is and the budget times have just gotten worse that we are only doing what we're required to do. I think where some of the challenge comes in when I hear in the community is that people want Fairfax County to be Fairfax County public schools. They want everything listed on slide 12 and slide um 13. And that's the challenge is that given our our you know the pressure on taxpayers and our current economy at the county
072given what Jark has shown the underfunding from the state and I know there's been some efforts around the support cap and things to address that however there is still a a need based on the JARK study to address funding especially with the LCI formula and I would say the SOQ's because that's one thing I wanted to talk about is that the reason our taxpayers here locally feel so much pressure and have to so much is because not just Fairfax County, but I believe every division, and correct me if I'm wrong, every division in in Virginia spends more than what the state says it should be spending on education. This is the challenge. The state says the SOQs, the standards of quality is what you should be spending to educate your students. And there is not
073a single division in Virginia who feels that they can educate their students even slightly okay with those standards of quality. I think across Virginia we spend and correct me if I'm wrong 6.6 billion all public schools 6.6 billion more than what the state funds based on its standards of quality. So if there's a point of advocacy here in addition to addressing the LCI funding formula which says that we get about you know 20% of 23% or 23 cents on the dollar for what it costs. Let's put it that way. 23 cents on the dollar for what a pay increase might cost. So when you hear Richmond say, "We funded 3% pay increase." Well, we get 23 cents per every dollar of that cost. So that formula needs to be looked at and I'm glad the
074rebenchmarking will be looking at that and maybe that will help. But I would argue that our SOQ formula needs to be because that's what's causing such pressure because all those things on slide 12 that we listed, including very good points by my colleague, Miss Dixit, those are all things we fund that the state says we don't need. I mean, that's the key. The state says our SOQs tell you that we don't need to have assistant principles or advanced academic resource teachers or college and career specialists or elementary art music PE teachers all of these things. That's the point of advocacy is that we need to reook from a state level. What is a good public education and then we need to fund it. All right, having said that, let's go to some gobacks >> unless
075the team or Dr. Re wants to weigh in on what I just said. All right, thank you. We'll start with Miss Marin. >> Miss Esmer, just really quickly, are we doing two or three minutes for gobacks? >> Um, it's 11 o'clock. We can we can do two minutes for this. We can do another. We can always do another round. Let's see what people have to say. >> Yeah, I I wish we could do three. Um, this is really important. So, I hear board members today asking to better understand the financial reality of this school division. I hear desires for information and analysis and adjustments and how staff are articulating the situation. So, I'm ready to commit to a new approach for budget work. However, I've heard several times this morning phrases like as we always
076do or it's the same as last year. Nothing can be the same as last year. We have to do things differently. So, here's information I am interested in seeing provided to the board. Um, an analysis of how funding for instruction is being maximized. And Miss Lady talked to this about college and career. Where are the biggest returns in investment for our instructional dollars? I go back to the world language discussion again. We cannot keep avoiding analyzing where our best money is being spent when it comes to student success. Same teaching schooly. If we can teach schooly and maximize that application that we are paying for, we will see those greater gains. But I have not seen a holistic change in that in four years since I've been advocating for that. We need to understand enrollment.
077I hear lots of questions today by the board. If our enrollment projections are going down, we need to know that because it impacts even the boundaries. I have residents asking, well, if we add more students to Marshall High School, but we have lots of development in the Tyson's corridor. They're exactly right. But then now here I'm hearing, well, there's a decrease in enrollment. So, which one is it? Because I've trusted staff projections around enrollment when it comes to CIP, but now I'm not sure. Um, we need to look at the whole picture of funding. as was mentioned that includes the bond but also the operational funds that we're spending and also the inind sorts of funding that the board of supervisors does provide outside of the transfer. We need to look at all of the
078dollars that are being spent and know um where our advocacy is needed. And then finally we need to understand early the options that we may have to consider. Uh there's got to be a revised acceptance. I'll just finish this point that we will we will not know what's coming from us from the state directly. We won't know what's coming from the state to the supervisors directly. However, I am not ready to do another game of chicken and waiting for us to see what the supervisors do. It's okay to be transparent about the needs we have and have a dialogue with funders. We have nothing to hide. So, how do we do those things differently this year? Any comments? >> I will say I think one way we've tried to do it differently this year is
079having an earlier budget work session in September and significant work on comms that we've been doing this year to get the information out to folks including the website um the whole comm's plan that was shared with the board. So there have been some efforts to try to do things differently and and get this. I think we tried to make it much more robust of a fiscal forecast so we can sort of forecast a little more what our challenges are and what the realities are. So there's still obviously some room for changes, but I think there is some some of that communication that we heard from the board in spring about the need for earlier and better communications and laying the found work is what I think we've tried to do in the budget this year.
080>> Well, I'd love to be able to finish the point I was going to make if we can have three minutes, but we have an hour and 15 minutes left. That's fine if you want to do three minutes. If you give Miss Marin a minute back and we'll just do three minutes for everybody else. >> I appreciate that. Yeah, because and I do and I I was just going through the calendar and I'm so pleased to see that we're meeting with the supervisors on December 2nd, not Thanksgiving week and we are meeting with them again um on February 24th. What I'm wondering is what new information is going to come to us because so far today it's been in the vein of what we usually receive and I don't see where is the return on
081investment. Where are the analyses? Why would we cut college and career counseling instead of something else? Show me what is better than to fund than college and career specialists. There's no analysis. When are we going to get your suggestions, Dr. Reid, about well if we did have to cut this is what it is and this is why. And this is also when I'll mention we have the EL review on financial and administration on February 6 and I did not find the superintendent in compliance on financial and administration exactly for these points. I don't see analysis of returns on investment. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. >> Um, I guess I'm going to pick up there as well because what I wrote on the slide for slide 12 is where do we have the most bang for our
082buck, but I also think this is a list that is I I think falsely alarming because it is not that we won't have assistant principles. It's that we have a different ratio than what is provided. every single AP is not going to be removed. So for me, this list it's a good start, but it's missing two things. One, very specific dollar amounts, and two, going back to the conversation we even had here when we were working on our legislative agenda. What is the potential impact to all of these pieces? Again, we have time. I don't think it needed to be in this conversation today, but I think it needs to be in subsequent conversations. If we reduce let's I'll pick up on what Miss Lady shared because that was the only one that we've had
083extensive conversation about so far career and college specialist what could that mean what would be the impact um because we will have to figure out where it is that we want to spend our dollars and I think overall what I'm looking for Dr. to read as you are preparing your budget. I know the conversation the narrative has always been the money is in class sizes. That's where we have that's where we can get a lot a lot of dollars quickly. That cannot continue to be our approach because we can save a penny here, a penny here, a penny here, and it adds up eventually to a dollar. I would like to see how the most strategic um approach to this instead of we're going to have the be this be applied across every single group
084across every single school. What would it look like if we were a little bit more strategic? How do we lean into the places where we have the highest needs? How do we use a a scalpel instead of a hatchet? I I'd like to see that level of strategy when the budget work here is provided. Um, also on page 12, what I did not see is transportation. And that may not be above and beyond because I don't I'm not sure if there's an SOQ on that. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Uh, Miss Burden, is there an SOQ on transportation? >> No, but they would be included in central office. >> Oh, okay. So perhaps tease that out a little bit because I know we've had conversations regarding some of the transportation that we provide for
085special programming. I would like to see that be part of the conversation as we go into this difficult budget um period. Um but I did have one more question. Well, let me actually ask you to respond to that, Dr. Reid. Could we be provided more impact details on these um topics that you have listed here on page 12? >> Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, we're going to provide you the cost that's above and beyond the SOQs for all of the above and beyond SOQ's because as a board, um, you need to obviously make recommendations and I think, uh, several of you made comments at the last board meeting that you wanted to have more involvement in determining which things are cut, um, if necessary. So, we're going to provide those, uh, cost figures
086for sure. ROI is difficult. We haven't done an independent program review on every single topic area and likely won't be able to do that in two months. Um I think we all have a perspective on the importance of different topics. Uh but it would be difficult to identify an ROI for example on the additional assistant principles or the um you know the uh different cyber security programs, right? It's just some of those ROIs to be really thoughtful require quite a bit of study and um to review all of these areas in that way I think would be challenging but we can certainly add costs um to the above SOQ funding for uh the various topics for sure. Um this year is a very different budget year because we don't currently um we're in year two
087of a collective bargaining agreement. We're not in year one. So, uh, we know what our fixed, uh, increases are, which we didn't at this time last year fully. Um, and the one bargaining unit that's still, um, in play, we do have the financials, uh, at least tenatively to look at. Um, but absolutely, we're starting the conversation earlier. I think, um, happy to provide all of the the funding pieces. I know Miss Burton can do that. Um, and I look forward to the continued conversation. Um, as you know, my budget has to be what I think the the uh division needs to be successful. As Miss uh St. John Cunning said, we have students that do require more uh resources and if we're going to maintain high expectations for each and every one of our students,
088that's going to include high support. Um, so it'll be, I think, um, you know, a a great conversation moving forward, but uh, we will provide the data you're asking for. I appreciate that. I have to say I'm surprised by some of the things you've just shared because two years ago when I was budget chair, one of the board's directives was to provide ROI on our programs, which kicked off the Baldridge work. How is that not going to inform ROI on all of these things? and that what's been happening thus far that I'll be honest I still I'm so unclear about what the Baldridge work is resulting for us outside of awards. So the Baldridge work is going to provide efficiencies. When I think ROI I think of researched uh independent research on all program areas
089and there are a lot listed there right? So we can provide our best estimate on ROI and in some cases it will be more research than others. Um having more elementary art, music and PE teachers for example that are on the um instructional side. Um we can certainly talk about the importance of art, music and PE. I think we all intuitively understand that. um the elementary special ed lead teachers. Uh again, we'd have to find like cohorts and that's a position that's unique to us quite honestly. So finding a benchmark research ROI position is going to be more challenging. We can talk about why we believe it's important here. And quite honestly, Dr. Anderson, we're going to look at every single one of those areas and say they're all important. There's nothing up there that
090we're uh committing resources to that is not important and isn't good for kids in our county. The question is going to be if we're not fully funded and I'm not convinced yet that that's not going to happen. But if we're not, then we're going to have to make choices about, you know, which particular programs we're not going to be able to fund. And that's a collaborative decision that we're going to need to make. So whatever data you need to be thoughtful about that, we'll provide it. I think that's my time. I'll take a go back. >> Thank you. Mr. FR hasn't had a first turn yet, so I'm gonna let him go and then we'll go back to the rest of the gobacks unless you want to wait. >> I just wanted to address the
091the comment about um ROI and Baldridge. uh if memory serves it was part of one of the board's uh budget priorities and then that was solemnized in um uh in our EL work to uh be achieved through the Baldridge work. So there wasn't some esoteric directive on ROI. There was a specific thing that the board adopted in the EL process to move forward with the Baldridge work. Um, so, uh, I just wanted to clarify that >> I did include a rather lengthy I want to say Marty was it the a recent application which includes a review of a number of departments. Um, and I know many people have been out of town recently, but it is in the Friday letter. I think this Friday letter passed. I'm sorry. >> Right. Last Friday, I believe we
092put in about the Baldridge work, which is again a benchmark. Uh but I think you know to be helpful in the budget work we can tease out by program um that level of analysis because we've certainly done a lot of work in that in the last year. >> Thank you Mr. Moon followed by Miss Anderson. >> Thank you. Looking at my clock to have a full three minutes even though I don't need all three minutes. Uh this is a comment on Did you say >> on a slide number nine and an followup request to provide additional information to be helpful to a a board members and public is uh you know I hate to see us ranked number seven out of number eight for the maximum salary level. However, I I think uh by providing
093uh number of years it takes to get to the maximum level, it will be a important data point that you probably will need to see. You know, for example, Prince William County, which seems to be way out there, $149,000, it takes 37 steps to get there. Our maximum is stem number 29. Stem number 20, you know, 29. So there there are differences and also our contract day is 195 days versus principal is 1952 but there are school districts which has 200 days number of school districts have a 200 work days for the teachers and 197 days. So having those additional information probably gives more accurate and fullload information for the public to see. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Anderson. >> There were just a few things that I wanted to go back to. First, um,
094as we're looking at what's happening across the county and across the state when when we're talking about rebenchmarking, Miss Burton, are we we are the reason that our bench that our LCI would be increasing is because the county is being identified as a having a reduced ability to pay. Is that correct? So if our LCI goes up, like if we're receiving more money from the state, it's because the insinuation is that the county doesn't have money as much money to provide. So the local composite index if the community's calculation is that we have less, you know, it's based on comp, you know, real estate prices, you know, income. There's um population components. If if if we are not as wealthy as we were in the previous bianium, our LCI would go down, which means that
095we would get more money from the state, >> but that's what's happening. Correct. >> That is what we we do not have the new LCI numbers yet from the state. That's what we anticipate. expecting to get them in the next. >> And so the idea here when and I'm I'm probably looking at the reverse of the LSA like the actual amount that we receive rather than and because that percentage is thrown back and forth. But I guess the point is is that as we are watching the decimation of our federal workforce from the federal government um and that is going to impact the county's ability to to provide the additional funding that we would need and the state recognizes that in the LCI distribution. Correct. The data is two years old. The although the state
096could decide to use more current data, they have long used data that was two years prior. So you wouldn't really see the impact of the federal government for a couple of years. Yeah, >> that's even scarier. So we're not even actually seeing the impact of what's actually going on. Although we are seeing it in terms of you know county collections and things like that that are happening at the within the tax bases here. The other thing that I to Mr. McDaniel's point that I wanted to point out in 2011 um 2.2 billion is 3.16 billion today because I love to know what the conversion is always. Um and so that is it's a significant amount of inflation that's happened since that time. Um and at the same moment that our needs are increasing. So we
097and we have a lot of work to do to ensure that when we're looking at uh salary comparison because anytime that we're talking about a percentage of money that we're trying to decrease anything those are people those it's people in our schools that are doing work with our students um almost 100% of the time because the when we when we talk about cutting from central office according to last year's numbers I think it was about 9% I mean it's a very small proportion of considering that we are larger than 11 states, I guarantee you our overhead is lower than um the state level. So, um the other thing that I want to say about slide 12 is for me slide 12 is just a list of things that we fund that are outside the SOQS.
098And so, yes, I understand that we have things that we're going to need to look at and make decisions on and all of that, but this is just a list of things where we these are things that are possible. These are and I want us to be very careful when we're talking about ROI because we are talking about tiny humans. We are talking about setting up kids to be successful for the rest of their lives and those children have been through a lot in the last five years related to everything that happened with the pandemic. We hear that often. We have a ton going on in terms of mental health and we're better than we were. [snorts] And so I am very concerned about us talking about ROI as if that doesn't matter and if
099it doesn't play play into our considerations. So yes, I want to understand where ROIs and where we have potential to cut things that are not going to be as harmful, but the reason we've made decisions up to this point is because we we thought that they were important above what the state is providing. So I just want us to be careful when we're talking about ROI. >> Thank you, Miss Anderson. Miss Dixs it >> ROI what an interesting word return of investment. So I came I'm from the business world right. So when I came to the board I was like yeah ROI matters right because you you spend money on things and you want and you get return but when I walked to the schools and I have more than a year of experience now
100uh on the school board it's they're two different things we can't uh really say the same uh things apply. We can talk about operational efficiency um you know programs effectiveness and we can talk in that but not in dollar terms because when you go to classrooms you see there are multiple teachers working for what one group of students um there are uh you know they say like it's not one teacher per you know who's educating you it's like a group they're special so it's very hard to like when I see the names on this uh list the the every single of uh one of them is affecting some way uh our student education and providing a support system for them for their safety and security as well. So um I I understand why we said
101some words but in in I think public education we'll have to probably think it in different differently just the business term doesn't really apply here. Um, and um, I did want to ask like if we get what we asked for, we don't have to cut anything, correct? Any of these other things? >> So, so if we get like $200 million, we're good. >> Assuming that the superintendent's proposed budget is similar to the fiscal forecast budget, >> actually, it's 190. I >> I just keeping some buffer, Dr. Reed. So, [laughter] I I just want to say community is watching and they are more involved than ever. I when I talk to PTA presidents and leaders and parents, they're all are saying that we are watching the budget cycle this year. They're aware that we were shortfunded
102last year and Fairfus County residents are very supportive of our school system. Our bond passed with, you know, 70% uh of the votes. So we would we would get the support from the count uh from our community, our parents, general public. So we we just have to make sure that now we get the money from the state. Um we are the one of the wealthiest county in in the in the Commonwealth and we don't get our due share. Um that needs to change. Uh we cannot keep funding all the other counties in uh in Virginia who are getting more money from state and federal. So we we should have more dollars back. So I'll stop there. Thanks. >> Thank you. And I I appreciate the conversation as well. And I did want to start with
103one of my colleagues talking about teacher salaries. Um I am really thrilled that the board I was on previously and this board has been um prioritizing teacher salaries because we cannot have an excellent education without good teachers and I am similarly concerned that we don't lose our veteran teachers. So I think I'm glad that in the very little that we're asking for which is focused on you know sort of in my opinion two main three main areas. One of which is abiding by our obligations under the collective bargaining agreement which I think is very important between the step increase and the market scale adjustment. We need to pay our folks we can keep them here. Um benefit rate changes there's nothing we can do about it. Everybody's dealing with the increase of benefit costs. our
104enrollment and student needs may actually bring that number down once we get final figures and we're abide we have to abide by our contractual agreements. I wanted to mention that's all we're asking for. But because 89% of our budget is for employee compensation because we are so employeeheavy because that's what schools are, right? It's a people organization. So it's different than other places where we can look to find maybe other efficiencies. Efficiencies here to the scale that we need. A 1% salary increase is about $30 million. So efficiencies here means people means class sizes. It's hard to find the scales to that size. And I know what we're looking and we're going to continue to look for efficiencies. Um I also wanted to piggyback on the ROI. Where do you even look for RO? Is
105it how normally in the business world you look at shorter term, longer term, but is it how are kids doing when they graduate? Is it college? I mean, where is that ROI? Is it 20 years down the road when they have a job after college? I think we have to be really clear on what it is we're benchmarking to figure out ROI. Having said that, I do think it's important to look at programs for efficacy and for to make sure that they're still in line with best practices because we do know educational practices change. So, I think looking at that and our budget for efficiencies and effectiveness is important, but I think we need to be careful not saying ROI because what are we looking at? Test scores, mental health outcomes, right? >> What are
106we looking at here? Right? So, I think that's important. I want to bring back the conversation a little bit to um the LCI as well. What I'm really excited about the benchmarking where I do think it may we may end up getting more money from the state is the LCI basically looks at three different figures. Looks at the true value of real estate. It looks at the adjusted gross income and it looks at taxable retail sales. I imagine retail sales will be down and the adjustable gross income will be down. Um, I'll just put a plug in for for the public listening that we need to look at that LCI formula because it 40% of that formula it runs through something is gross income. However, localities aren't allowed to tax gross income. So, it's essentially
107a bucket of funds that the localities can't touch, but their localities are being held to be responsible for being able to pay based on a bucket of funds they can't touch. And I'm not advocating necessarily for an income local income tax. I'm saying the formula falsely presumes an ability to pay by a bucket of funds that only the state and federal government can touch. So there's a lot of work to be done I think at the state level. >> Um we're going to go to go backs and since we still have an hour I'll still continue to three minutes. We'll start with Miss St. John Cunning. Um, so I actually just want to piggyback and and appreciate um that my very businessoriented colleague uh pointed out that in when we're looking at return of investment,
108it's not always dollars and cents. And I I do believe we have to look at that. I mean, it's important, but many of you know my story and know why I'm motivated and why I'm on this board. because Fairfax County Public Schools literally saved the life of my child. How can we ever put a measure of compensation and return for investment in that? So, we are not a business, we are a service. And I think too many of too much of the noise going on right now is businessoriented and dollars and cents versus services. And so, yes, we are responsible for looking at the dollars and cents, but all of us here are committed to doing this work here because we look at the little people and the young adults in our in our system
109as well as our teachers and recognize that we are providing a service. And I cannot ever thank Fairfax County Public Schools enough for the fact that my daughter is extremely successful because of what happened here. But more important, she is alive and she is thriving. >> Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Thank you. Um going to slide nine, Miss Burton, can you share what potential steps could be taken to impact the maximum um group moving that from seven to a lower number? What would that in what could that entail? >> Well, we're we're working on it. Um you may recall that the collective bargaining agreement um requires that we add a step at the top of each salary schedule uh in fiscal 27 and fiscal 28. Um Mr. Mr. Moon is absolutely correct. Prince William has like
11037 steps uh compared to air 26. And so that's part of the the issue is that most of the other divisions around us have more steps than we have. And so that's why we compare poorly when you look at the top. Um and like I said, we we are whittling away at that every year by adding another step at the top. So I mean, and our our goal originally was to at least get to 30 because a VRS unreduced retirement requires 30 30 years. And you know, we would like teachers to make their home with us, you know, from the time they graduate from college till 30 years later. Um, but that's that's part of the issue is that we have shorter schedules than some of the other divisions. Um, and we're we're working on
111it, but aside from doing, you know, something that's much more expensive, um, you know, it's just going to take some time. And what would be the financial impact of adding an additional step to each of the salary schedules? >> Uh I think it's about four million >> and that's included in the collective bargaining agreement. >> Okay. Thank you. Can you also share where we are um comparing um our bachelors um in terms of mid, mid and max? Yeah, at the bachelor's uh step one we rank two of eight and at the mid five of eight and the max five of eight. So it's just slightly better at the mid and max levels. Could there be a budget scenario in which we are resourcing a little bit better the areas that we are let's say five
112and above of eight and not necessarily focusing on the areas where we're one and two if I might uh Dr. Anderson, those would be topics that would be collectively bargained. It we can't we are at this point not able to intervene in salary. Um I think Mr. Smith could probably also comment on that because the collective bargaining unit would have to say this is a priority for them. Recall we're in year two of the collective bargaining agreement. So I don't you know I think that's something we could think about um two years from now, right? Because we have year two and then year three. Uh but that's something that could be brought to the table as an interest. Uh but at this point it wouldn't be something we could play with for next year. >>
113I see. So does that mean um the slide um the chart on slide seven where it has a step increases and market rate adjustments. Uh both of these we don't have any wiggle room in these numbers at all because it's related to CBA or there is some. >> So again and good afternoon uh good morning everyone. Uh so those numbers are built into the collective bargaining agreement for FEU and we use that as the basis for building the budget. Uh that's the uh one of the values of having a collective bargaining agreement because you know how to plan your budgets for the term of the contract. So we knew >> but I was told just a little bit earlier that these numbers reflected all employees not just FEU employees. >> So these numbers do reflect
114all employees. you have a TBD uh for our FCF PSA collective bargaining group. Uh some information will be coming to the board regarding those additional costs and then once those costs are known these numbers would be adjusted to reflect that. >> No, that's not what I meant because I think you did have that TBD for PSA which I didn't realize now had its own acronym. So the 62.6 and the 84.8 8 that represents all employees, not just FEU employees outside of the PSAs. >> That That's correct. It No, it's all employees. >> So, could I get the numbers for what that would be for just FEU employees? Again, it's um >> there's everybody is in FEU except for PSA and that's 1,400 people. So it's but not everybody is in FEU. We have uh some
115groups that are not in FEU. Not all of our parent leaison are in FBU and I would imagine this includes them as well. Everybody that's eligible to be in FEU. I mean, if you're an hourly employee, everybody is eligible to be in FEU except for the PSA group and that's about 1,400 people. But these um step increases and market scale adjustments will be applicable to even all of the employee groups that we have because we do have a couple that are not in FEU that were not allowed to to be represented. Well, that's confidential employees. And according to Virginia's collective bargaining rules, you can treat confidential employees as if they were part of the union that they would have belonged to if they weren't confidential. >> And we also have some of the employees you're
116talking about in terms of our family liaison. Those who are uh FTEES and part of the operating budget, they are part of FEU. Those who are hourly are not covered by the collective bargaining agreement. >> But then we are including them in this in this as well. >> Yes, they are part of FEU. Those who are uh in the operating fund and our FTEES, they are part of FEU. >> The hourly are not. And remember, we're in a a phased um movement towards making all family liaison a 1.0 position. We do have that last trunch of title of title one family liaison that actually they're not title one. We already did those. It's the remainder and it's about 40 50 positions. Um but you know that's a multi-year investment >> and I know that was
117my very strong advocacy and so I'm glad we're heading there. I just use it as an example because I I think there's a disconnect that I may be able to explain a little bit offline here because I was not under the impression that every single employee group that would be impacted by this step and market scale adjustments are part of FEU. So, I'm looking for a more definitive number that is tying us to the collective bargaining um um agreement, not just we're applying it because of some other rationale. >> We can get a breakdown of all employees of all position titles that are in each of our collective bargaining units. Uh one thing that Mr. Solomon and his team have done, they have applied to all of our job descriptions. uh when you go on
118to our our website to to apply for a job, you'll note which uh bargaining unit that position is part of and again we have the uh two op the instructional and operational for FEU and then we have uh the administrative which is FCFPSA those are uh the bargaining units we have and all of our employees are then uh in uh those units say for our leadership team members and our confidential employees. >> Okay. >> I think that list that I'm looking for is probably the shorter one. Who is not under FEU? Rather, who is under FEU? But with my last 25 seconds, I'd like to ask um regarding enrollment. Um and I do understand our kids don't come in these nice little neat packages. They never have and they never will. But being that we're
119about 4,000, and I got the numbers, um Dr. Reid, so you don't need to look up look that up for me. Being that we're about 4,000 from where we were, did we did we see any savings with the decrease in enrollment? >> We're actually not 4,000. What we want to do and what we need to do is we um look at year-over-year um at the same moment in time, not June, because as I mentioned earlier, we're going to continue to grow through June. So, we're going to have a higher number in June than we do today. Um so, I can do the math, but it's a it's a little bit less than that. I think it's 177 from 180. So, it's I think if somebody could do the math for me and announce it, it's
120less than 3,000 difference, I believe. But anyhow, I don't believe we've seen savings on that because um we've had some fewer staff positions, but as you mentioned, when students don't come in neat packages and we're um over in some places and under in others, you could >> that's what this negative 41.8 8 million under enrollment represents is the reduction in the amount of staffing that we will need because >> we we have an enrollment loss that it's >> um you're not saying the same things. >> I'm not sure. I'm trying to answer your question about did we save um significant money on that and I think we didn't fill certain teaching or >> we didn't fill certain positions for sure based on formula but um we >> Yeah, she's talking about current year. I'm talking
121about fiscal 27. >> Okay. >> Yes. So that's why we're like you're not saying the same things. >> No, but I think you were asking about current year, right? >> Yes, I was. I was. So what we've seen is um there's some there's been some uh there were part of this is we've had less uh attrition and we've also needed to hire less. We hired significantly fewer staff this year. Um so that has enabled us to save some monies. Uh but in some cases we haven't been able to have fewer staff because um we uh by October one we're now moving staff still um to positions and making sure that we're able to um you know still carry on activities. So like just simple examples, right? When we take um particular trips or have particular
122experiences for students, whether they're 10 fewer students at that school or 30 fewer students, we're still doing those experiences and with the same relative cost. So I think we've seen some economies of savings, but not to the degree that um we might think. And again, as we continue to gain students year week over week, um, and we're gaining at about the same rate. It's a little le it's a little slower rate than last year, but we're still gaining. Um, I do think we'll see some, uh, continued savings and that we're not hiring as many people throughout the year. Um, but we're still staying fully staffed. >> Does somebody do the math for me? time >> uh from September to September, we're uh down about 3,200 students September September to September and we are increasing from
123that September number. >> Thank you, Miss Mayor, and follow by Mr. Fr. >> Okay. I'm wondering if maybe the better term than return on investment is economies of scale. So here's the example that's fresh on my mind. A few weeks ago, I happened to attend with the superintendent here at Gate House a session with high school students who were environmental activists and they had wanted the opportunity to figure how they could do more. They were from over a dozen high schools. They came here after school. So clearly like motivated students. Um what I learned in that session is that this is what a student said is that they're only receiving two weeks of climate change education in their entire high school career. It's included in IB environmental science. I asked about the outdoor classrooms, as
124you know, has been a passion project of mine. $7 million, 36 high schools. I learned in one high school, four teachers are using it regularly. Four. And that directive to build those classrooms was to roll out professional development and instructional changes. That's what I mean by return on investment. We spent a lot of money to make that happen. How is it being used? what might need to come off the table so that students so that we can that's what the board directed right so I just sent around to the colleagues in this room including our leadership team members and staff um some internal work documents that began in 2021 and this was referenced at some point but at the time uh Miss Seismarheiser and I brought to the board and the board did a program
125review in an attempt to try and understand what was being offered and this was part of the then the budget budget review. We try to do I think it was the co year month by month looking at each um office. And so what I did was I took PDFs and I put them in spreadsheets to show how often courses were being offered. And additionally in 2022 I added information and in 2024 that 2024 piece is actually what is going to come to us this Thursday as a new business and that is the secondary course offerings. So last year I took the PDF and I put it in a spreadsheet and I said I want to see where is American Sign Language offered. Where is um uh uh it was like a geology or geospatial where
126is that being offered? Studio art, geosystems, data science and I added up. So this is in a spreadsheet. You can see high school course selection responses and you can see that it was added in some schools not others. Why? We were not informed. We asked at the session. and I pulled it off of consent just like I did this week. It's new business this week, but it'll be action on 124. Why were some courses why was pharmacy technician offered in three high schools but not others? Now, the kicker is is that this course catalog means that it's open for offer? Well, we can have thousand. It's like apps, right? There's thousands and millions of apps. which ones are going to give us the biggest economy of scale because we can no longer afford to offer
12720 different types of one subject. We need to be really clear and and going back to the AI discussion. Well, is um I I hate to pick any of these, but you know, and any of these is cloud computing CTE. Is that what we need to do to get students ready for AI? So, I have yet to look at what the PDF that I'm going to have to put in a spreadsheet for 124. Why are these decisions being made? I think we deserve we need to know. >> Thank you, M. >> I'll ask Dr. Prescidio to respond as the instructional services department is the department that owns the >> AB. Absolutely. No, I I appreciate it and I appreciate Miss Marin's work on this for a number of years and her advocacy on it. I
128think one of the things that Miss Marin said is there's a difference between a standard course offering and an optional course offering in schools. So we work really hard um with a committee of boardappointed community members, administrators from schools and central office every year to review our course offerings and try to make determinations about courses that maybe we have as optional course offerings that we think are so important that they should be standard course offerings. When you have a standard course offering, that means that every school needs to offer that course to students if there's sufficient enrollment in the course. So, for example, there could be a course um that is a standard course offering, but when we ask students if they're interested in taking it, instead of getting 30 students, which we would typically
129require to run a course, we only get a couple students that are interested in it. Um, recently we ran a ballet class kind of similar to that. we didn't have enough students to be able to run it. Then we have optional course offerings that um we can offer at schools that might supplement some of the unique needs uh that their students are expressing interest in um or some of the unique talents that their faculty members have because remember every course that we offer um requires a licensed teacher to be able to offer it. So that is a you know that's always a consideration. Do you have staff available with the correct lensure to be able to offer these classes? And we do have a large number of courses um that are optional course offerings that
130we could always consider to be standard course offerings. And we do that through um the current process that we have um established by board policy and FCPS regulation. >> Thank you very much. Um next we have Mr. Fris followed by Miss Lady. wanted to clarify a few things. Um, back to the ROI question. Um, one of the things that we talked about as a board when we were initially doing this uh and moving towards uh the uh Baldridge work um was how you can have efficiency uh and sacrifice efficacy and you can have efficacy and sacrifice efficiency and that what we're after is the nexus of the two, right? Um and so um I think it's important that the Baldridge work is trying to create people within the division who are capable of doing that
131work internally so that we're not farming out um the work to expensive consultants uh who would come back and maybe not have as firm a grasp on the lay of the land inside of FCPS so that we do end up accidentally sacrificing uh efficacy for efficiency. sake or vice versa. Um so, um I'll be, you know, keeping an eye out for those regular updates in the superintendent's Friday letter, uh that tell us where we are in that process. Um and, um I also wanted to talk about or address the question of that Dr. Anderson was bringing up about um who's covered and who's not covered. And so, people at home may not understand what a confidential employee means, like it's a secret agent or something. Um these are simply people in the school division from
132senior people to very very junior people um not that I'm describing anybody's job as junior but in terms of where they might fit in the org chart um who uh for lack of a better way of saying it might have an impact on collective bargaining in some form. So they are not covered by one of the unions because they'd be bargaining for their own benefit and so they're not included in that. Um uh so um as for the others, my understanding is that everybody else is um covered by the the agreements um even if they're not dues paying members of FEU um because that is the way that collective bargaining works. um in a post uh court precedent uh world where compulsory membership is not required unfortunately um people who are not dues paying members
133get to take advantage of the benefits that labor works hard uh to bring about for them uh whether or not they're paying dues um I happen to think they should be paying dues uh but uh we'll have to wait for a Supreme Court that values working people um additionally um hourly employees are not specific hourly employees, non-ful-time hourly employees are not covered by uh collective bargaining because uh they're not covered by much of the uh benefit work that we provide within our school system. So we're talking about a very small fraction of people in the school system. What was the number again? 1400 out of 41,000 people who are not covered in some form by the collective bargaining agreements. Uh or will soon be covered. >> Wait. Okay. 1,400 FTEES are in the PSA. >>
134That's right. In the PSA, sorry. >> But the 40,000 represents 26,000 >> including the hourly and then about 14,000 hourly part-time. >> 14,000 hourly part-times, right? which are so still about three to one uh in terms of who's covered by the agreement. Now, if the board wanted to move towards everybody being covered, we have a lot of money to come up with uh to ensure that everybody who's a part-time hourly employee uh is now a full-time uh employee uh receiving the full breadth of uh benefits and support the school division offers other employees. But I don't think that's a road we're on because it's not uh what's required for the jobs that we have in that matter. Um we we are moving some towards that and uh if there are others that need to be
135moved in that direction, I think we should probably hear from people who think that. So just wanted to clarify those things. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Lady. >> Thank you. I just wanted to add a little to the conversation around course offerings. Um I think what's really hard for uh outside folks to comprehend or understand is um well I think they people understand their cultures at schools. Um but when it comes to the notion of standard course offerings which there are often standard course offerings that don't go at a school because there's no interest. Um there's sometimes I mean if there's interest in a standard course offering and we don't have someone certified to teach it but we have the kids who want to take it we have to offer it and we will
136find the teacher. Um, when it comes to optional course offerings, some of that's culture. And so, just to remind folks that, you know, an instructional staff uh or a leadership council or whatever you want to call it, I when I was at Chantilly to offer a new optional course, it was voted on by the instructional leadership because when you offer something new, you sometimes cannibalize something else that's there. And so just understand that there might be a culture at one high school of u sports leadership and there's no appetite for it somewhere else as a standard course offering. Um and I just want to up share that. And then there's also courses like pharmacy tech which are atmies. We don't have the the the the lab space or the infrastructure to teach that in every
137single school. Um and I've shared this before when I was a counselor at Marshall. I literally told all my kids that theater was required because I felt that the theater teacher at that school was the best teacher in the entire school and when in life do you not have to stand and deliver a line? Um and while some kids did not take it, um I had a lot of kids who did and then they took two and three and four years of it. Um, so I bring that up just because and also as a counselor, we hate to hate to use this terminology, but there's also places where there isn't the same strength um, instructionally. And so, you know, I I would I want my kids to be in front of fantastic teachers who care
138about them as people. So, um, the culture of the school is always going to drive some of what's happening with course offerings. So, as much as we don't want to be a system of schools, there's a little bit of that that's going to be hard to avoid. Um, just because some places, you know, and back to Mr. Moon's point, yeah, the top of our scale might be at 29 years, but we've got people that are in their 45th year of teaching making the same darn thing because there's no step for them to go up. But their loyalty to brand, their loyalty to their school, their loyalty to those kids sustains that. You know, an example of that would be uh you know, the the gentleman, I'm not going to name names, but there's an econ
139teacher at Chantelli who's retiring this year. I fully expect that econ program to change because he is so incredibly good that people want to take his class and sometimes that just changes with time. Um, so I just want to talk about that a little bit because I just think it's hard for people to understand what happens from a course catalog to the building of a ma master schedule. I I think if you want to really learn that, then maybe we want to look at course tally sheets from a couple different schools um and help understand how that generates a master schedule for those kids based on what they asked. >> The other part of that and having worked in a high school for many many years is it could be on the tally sheets, but
140then when you look at the conflict matrix, I think is what we used to call it. often there were kids weren't able to fit it in their schedule because they had a required or something maybe a continuation of a world language continuum or math or science that even though they wanted the course it wasn't going to fit in their schedule based on the course period um it was going to be offered so it is a complex topic um but to the degree possible I think uh using that standard course catalog so everyone has a chance to opt uh for the course I think um is important but I I did want to note the conflict matrix too because sometimes if you have limited sections of certain courses it limits enrollment. >> Thank you and thank
141you for this robust conversation. Um we now have Miss Dixit and then we've have got go backs. I did I just want to frame while I think this is a great conversation. I'm glad we're having it. We we are focused a little bit on the budget fiscal forecast for today and the information around that and I know we'll have a chance to talk about course offerings as well at our board meeting. >> Can I just add we are looking for an opportunity to see whether or not there's room at an upcoming work session that we can have a a short but robust conversation. >> Wonderful. I'll take a look at that for the agenda too. Uh course offerings. All right. Um Miss Dixit. >> Yes. Um I'm going to just uh go back to the
142budget uh discussion and uh uh economy of scales uh it is basically uh where you gain advantage by production cost is low when your average cost is low per unit right so if we offer courses at every high school each course and then we have to hire those teachers and every is opposite of economy of scales because then your cost is going high by offering those uh those things But where we can offer off economy of scales and we should definitely look into this is facilities maintenance. Uh we we have to look that as an um you know how government um is federal government is doing their buildings maintenance uh issue contracts um you know look at that option as fixed form fix price or other other contracting measures and that is the way probably
143to minimize some of our cost and then we have we buy a ton of like uh computer laptop I'm sure we are using that economy of scales there where we are negotiating the best deal Another thing uh mismahiser and I are on the joint IT task uh force with the uh county supervisor and we're looking at different ways where we are buying services we can negotiate a better pricing with counties and our uh combined collective purchasing power. So those are the things I would seeing we can see join some savings coming up and I think the staff at both sides are looking into that. So um but I'll I'll say this I I I think there are ways where we can save money but there are some ways we do have to save money and
144the population is shifting. I know the enroll numbers enrollment numbers are down a little bit but not in all schools. So uh we are we are seeing increase on some schools and they're overcrowding and then obviously there are schools and um and when I go to schools I I find them really engaging the teachers are working so it doesn't look like there's somebody sitting like an idle body working just wandering around because everybody is busy and engaged with students uh when we go to the schools. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um, a little go backs. I've lost gobacks, but um, Miss M, we still have time, so I'll go ahead and give you three minutes. >> Thank you so much. So, you know, two things. I I agree that it's hard for people to understand
145how the courses are offered. It's hard for me to understand it as a board member and a parent and I should understand by now, at least as a board member, how the decisions are being made to fund courses and get staff. Um, especially, you know, when I think again about how the superintendent wants us to meet the moment for AI. Well, what courses no longer serve that trajectory financially and to meet that goal. I think this is really part of the strategic plan work just like we have invested in early literacy and elementary school literacy other things came off the table and that has borne results. So what are those things now? I am not a fan of giving limitless options to students and saying well here's an option or your school could adopt it.
146It's dangling like I have kids who want to do American Sign Language. Well, if students really want to do it and there's a job market for it, how about we make that happen? Um, you know, we used to talk about in the last board like the Fairfax promise. What are the non-negotiables that every student gets? We know it's the four core academics, right? But is woven in there now the AI work. We talked about weaving in the get to green work, right? This was the program audit. We have a global education program. We have a get to green program. We have all these things, but ideally they are woven in so that it's not just dependent on school culture and that superstar teacher who we know when they leave things change. There's got to be
147some basic agreement to how the things that kids need are being woven in and it's not left to chance of whether we could staff it. We could talk about dual enrollment. We have artists that's part of the Fairfax promise. Great. But maybe once they get to advance they switch over to dual enrollment or there's an academy. I have this data from 2021. I have not seen anything change and I'm just not gonna let it go at this point. We are funding the same things. So, we don't want to increase class size. What course offerings are we going to take off that no longer serve our students? I go back to world language. The data from 2021 show that we have 150 something elementary schools. Half had zero world language. Half currently to my knowledge because
148I haven't received an update since. And of that half, some are in flesh, which was made at the turn of the century for a different purpose than our very international community. Where is that analysis of how effective that is? And if that's money well spent, the other students do immersion. Is that effective? I have asked this question four years in a row. This board must be looking at the course offerings and how much money it's costing. And we have got to use the data. It's not effective, Dr. Reid, for the board to receive data and say, "Here you go. Do what you want. Tell me what you want me to do." What is your recommendation? What courses do you believe every student should have access to? What are the musthaves and how much does that
149cost? Thank you. I just want to make sure that for the flesh and world language programs, you're asking flesh and immersion if they're effective. I just want to make sure that Dr. Presidio has these notes because we're going to need to uh come back with those. >> I feel like it would take some more time for me to articulate that and it's the same articulation that's been made in prior years. >> Okay. So, we're looking for the effectiveness of lesson and >> do you think it is something that every student should have and if so, what's the plan to make that happen? I don't know Miss Chair Anderson if you would like to add. >> The only thing that I want to add here is that we have a forum topic that we're trying to
150schedule right now related to world languages. So I would like to pause some of this conversation because I think that the board needs to have the discussion first um before we put the superintendent on the spot in terms of trying to make a determination related to this. So I do we are working hard to figure out a time where all the members that put forward that work session or the forum topic are going to be able to be present and so that's what we're trying to get coordinated. Well, I appreciate that. I just want to say it's already been a topic like >> start her time please because the time has been paused for a while. Thank you. I just want to say and this is a board governance thing. This was a topic that
151Russia and I raised as a forum topic in 2021. It has not been resolved. So now there's a new topic but we're talking about of course like M >> I just want to say since no one else has one person has a plea at what point do we count this as done? Yes, Miss Heismore. >> I was responding to Chair Anderson's comment. >> I appreciate that we've given lots of rounds and I I want to bring us back to the budget which is what we're talking about. I think what I'm hearing from Chair Anderson is that there's at least two future possibilities. One, a future work session that she is still scheduling with staff around course offerings as well as a forum topic that we could potentially also discuss the program review forum topic to
152see where that stands. That was um done. We had two work sessions on it with Dr. Prescidio's office um with Elaine Tolen when she was still here. And so we could see maybe bringing that work back. But I do want to just sort of focus back on the fiscal forecast conversation. Um, having said that, I it feels like there is a need for as we're going into years potentially of tough budgets to do some more work around our are and I've said this often on on the special education side, but I think it is merits and this is something for Dr. Presidio and the instructional services department to really do a deeper dive into what are we offering, what are we not offering and what is what is the most valuable given the needs of
153our students. So I think just to frame that for that future conversation um I think that's important. It's I think there's a lot of questions that Miss Marin, Miss Tol and I and others have had around that conversation. Um but I don't see any other placards for the fiscal forecast. Oh, I'll give you one last one and then we're gonna go ahead. Yes, this is just what I need. Um, one of the things that I'm concerned about the list that you provided here, Dr. Reid, as we are working on our board priorities, I think each and every one of us can say these things should be untouched, should not be touched, these things are important because um I I'm feeling as if we need a little bit more in order to really cope with the
154situation that we're in. Um, we cannot this cannot be business as usual. We can't say, "Well, everything matters, so we can't change anything outside of getting $200 million to get us there." I I I think we're clear that we're going to have some gaps. We're hopeful that we're not going to have those gaps, but I think we are going to have some gaps. So, how do we make decisions? So, in your mind's eye, I don't want to put you on the spot, per se, because I know we've had some conversations about how do we evaluate certain things. What would be what are some of the considerations that we should be having as board members in order to determine well this is going to be better if there's going to be less harm if we are
155making reductions in these places. I quickly tried to scan the Baldridge report that was in the Friday letter of last week. That does not give me that information. Again, I was quickly scanning it. I I'd like to be able to walk out of here with something that is going to guide my thinking because we know not every single thing we do is having the results that we want. Whether we want to call it efficiencies, ROI, whatever it is, we have to evaluate how we're spending our dollars and what is the best way to spend our dollars because we have had instances where we have stopped certain things in order to bring in new things that are more impactful, that are more effective. I'd like your your guidance here and how do we evaluate this list
156since it may be part of our considerations for board priority work. So I think if we go back to slide 12, I believe it was slide 12 if I recall, these are the areas in if you will a macro look that are not currently funded um by formula from the Commonwealth of Virginia. And so I think that in guiding your thinking um these would be the areas that uh we go above and beyond and we provide additional resources. Um I think we can count on the SOQ funding coming. Um so these are all the areas that as you think about the priorities you have as a board member that um we as a team, the budget team and the senior leadership team have looked at and said just as we did last year, these are
157the areas if we're going to need to make cuts that they will likely come from some part or parts of um these areas that are not SOQ funded. >> But how do we avoid cancelling each other? There's 12 of us. Let's say each of us equally said, you know, these are the areas that are important and we should not touch. How does that give you any feedback? >> Well, I that's a great question. That's why I think you have your next steps process and I think that my understanding is that Miss Seismoreheiser is going to be sending out a form similar to uh prior budget cycles where you're able to see what each other uh think about that. that I mean that's the purpose of the conversation really is to have a conversation to hear
158each other's thoughts on these topic areas. I think several of you have shared your passion for um different initiatives that are up there. And at the end of the day, what I would say is there isn't anything up there that's not important for this school division, this community, and the future of our country. >> Correct. Having said that, if we're not going to be fully funded, we're likely going to need to look at one of these areas um for some type of budget work. And um at this point, this is our first, if you will, public conversation around this work. And I it's been helpful, I think, for both myself and our staff to hear some of your questions, some of your requests for additional information, and we'll get those out to you as soon
159as possible. Well, I will wait until I have your feedback in ter because I made a request for more information because I do agree. Yes. While I do agree that all of these things are important, I do know that they impact the student experience in different ways and they impact certain groups in different ways. Groups that we've been trying very hard to to raise um their performance. Thank you. That's it. >> Thank you. And I appreciate this robust discussion. So, just as a summary, after this meeting, I will be sending out to you the Google form for your budget priorities. You are welcome to put priorities of things you'd like to see, things that perhaps you think maybe we don't need to do as much. As a reminder, as Dr. E just said, this slide
160was merely to say, these are the things that we provide above and beyond what the Commonwealth of Virginia thinks we need to provide to provide an education. And as a reminder, every single school division in Virginia provides more than what the Commonwealth of Virginia says they need to provide. So um it is not becau and the last thing I'll leave with is that while I think this is a great start to this discussion I look forward to the the discussion around the um the course offerings as well as a reminder we're also going to have chance for the public to weigh in through our public hearings and other engagement. And I think that's really another important voice to bring into this conversation as to what the public also prioritizes when we're in these tough budget
161years with an understanding that these are all the things that the locality helps us provide on top of what the state funds. And so we're all entering to very tough and uncertain budget times and we need to have a conversation about what our priorities are including what we can continue and what we can't. And so I appreciate the robust conversation. take a look at. I know Miss Burton's team will send out the budget questions information and process as well and we'll have the same process as last year. So, if you have any questions or comments, please talk to myself or Miss Dixa as budget vice chair and we'll look to continue this conversation and process. Thank you all very much. And with that, I'll give you 12 minutes of your life before lunch back. >>
16212:25 work session. I guess this part of the work session is not called to order. At 10:04, uh, Mr. Dunn has submitted written request to attend this mo this afternoon's meeting virtually due to a personal conflict. Um, he had a prior work commitment. Mr. Dunn is located in Mount Vernon, Virginia. Mr. Dunn, please check your audio after we vote. All in favor? He's not on yet, but all in favor? And we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, I believe. Okay. All against, all abstaining. Okay. That motion carries. Mr. Dun is able to join us. We have majority with folks in the room. And whenever he does um arrive, please let us know so we can go ahead and test his audio. Aloy. Um Dr. Reed, did you want to share anything before I
163jumped into a quick um review of what we hope to accomplish today? >> No, I'll just introduce Mr. Mallaloy when it's time. >> Okay. Absolutely. Thank you. Well, today's conversation, I believe, is going to be the last discussion we will have um on this matter. What we're hoping to accomplish today is to be able to one to finalize um our priorities because those will need to be shared with our Northern Virginia delegation. And I think there are some changes there that we will also discuss um as we go into the presentation. Another piece of business that we hope to accomplish today is to um review all board members submitted amendments to the program and hopefully come to consensus about those today in order to avoid sausage making at the table. If we are able to
164have consensus today, then we will just include them into the program rather than voting on each as we have typically done. So, it will definitely shorten the time that we will spend. Um, we're excited for this second piece. Um, I believe that we are ready to rock and roll. Miss Marin, are you wanting to add anything else before we turn it over to Dr. Reid? >> No, I think the changes that are forthcoming in Richmond have a lot of opportunities and who knows what in front of us. So continuing with our legislative program intact and working with our partners to see what they're doing is going to be um a very timely time. So >> Dr. Anderson, Mr. Dunn has joined us. >> Okay, Mr. Dunn has joined us. You've been voted into the meeting.
165Can you please test your microphone and audio? I'm sorry, your microphone and visual. >> Okay, we will circle back with you. C >> can you hear me? It is very low. >> Can you hear me better now? >> I think it's on our end. We'll go ahead and have Mr. um Ho take care of that. [snorts] >> While we do that, Miss um Dr. Reid, I'll turn it over to you for your introductions. >> Thank you, Dr. Anderson. [clears throat] So, um, to follow on what Miss Marin was saying, I think this is a point in time, uh, maybe even a historic time in the Commonwealth of Virginia for the possibility of, uh, legislative action. So, um, it makes this topic even more important, I think, um, this year. So, I'd like to introduce Michael
166Malloy, um, who will kick us off. >> Before we get started, Mr. Mallaloy, can we have one more check? Mr. Dunn, >> can you hear me? Yes, we can. It's still a little low, but we are able to. Mr. Mallaloy, I apologize for the interruption. >> No, that's uh totally fine. So, good [clears throat] afternoon everybody. It's a little loud. It's a little it's a little little louder than uh than anticipated. Um so, uh you know, happy to be here. Uh you know, we definitely have had some changes since we last spoke in September. Um we've got a little bit more clarity at the state level about uh what the executive branch looks like, what the legislature is going to look like going forward. Um talk to you a little bit about that. Um as
167uh Dr. Anson mentioned, you know, one of the the goals or the the goal for today's conversation is to finalize your language um for your federal and uh and state legislative program for your adoption um coming up here in the next few weeks. Uh so the objectives I I do do again want to set some of some stage some uh kind of background information about what the political landscape and the policy landscape look like going forward. Uh as part of the agenda item, you have drafts of all the legislative program documents at this point. You have the the the program document itself, which you've actually seen a couple of different times in your September work sessions. Uh but you also have drafts of uh language for your state priorities which are based on the kind
168of the broad categories that you had had identified in your September meetings. Um federal uh priorities same way. And then we also have language for the potential joint position with the board of supervisors. Um that the language that they're considering. [snorts] And then finally, we want to turn to continue planning for your outreach with our um with our delegation and preparation as we get closer and closer to uh the general assembly session. So, just as a reminder, you've seen you've seen this uh before, but uh you know, engagement is a year- round thing. You know, we don't we don't only talk about legislative issues and policy issues uh during the general assembly session. There's a lot of work that goes up until the legislative session and there's a lot of work that happens after the
169legislative session. So, November elections, um, obviously everybody has read the headlines, so you know that there is now a new governor- elect, a new lieutenant governor elect, and a new attorney general elective branch. Um those those uh those folks don't take office until uh actually interestingly enough 3 days after the general assembly has started. The general assembly starts on Wednesday uh January 14th. Uh their inauguration is on Saturday January 17th. So, um, again, you still have the current administration who will be, uh, who will be in place between now and, uh, January 17th. For the, uh, for the House and the Senate, uh, the House of Delegates runs every two years. They were all up for reelection this year. Um, the current configuration of the general, the current partisan uh, split in that chamber right
170now is 51 Democrats, 49 Republicans. after the 2026 election and once everybody is seated coming into the next general assembly session. Um that split is going to be 6436. Um and in terms of our delegation, so our our 15 members, all of our incumbents were returned to office um from the House. So the the folks that we've worked with in the last several years um will continue to be the same same folks there. Uh I I did put the Senate on there even though they weren't up for election because there are a couple of things that have happened that will actually impact the Senate. Uh their current partisan split is 2119. Um because the lieutenant governor elect is a sitting senator, she will have to resign her seat um before taking her new her new
171position. Um that will open up that seat. It means that for a time uh the partisan composition in that chamber will be 20 to 19 um because that seat will be open. Uh in terms of getting a a a new senator into that seat, it really depends on when the lieutenant governor elect resigns their seat because they can't start the process of a new special election um until that happens. So, it's possible that we will begin the general assembly session with that 2119 or with that 2019 um split on the the Senate side. Uh, another thing that that's important is that uh Senator Hashmi is currently the chair of the Senate Education and Health Committee, which means that's a position that will become vacant as well when we come to the new general assembly. So,
172there will be a new chair. We think we know who it is. I don't think the name has been uh has been officially announced. Um but it's a it's a sitting member on on that committee will be elevated to to the chairmanship of that committee. Number of things happening between now and the opening of session. Uh in fact this Monday bill pre-filing officially opens. That's the first date that somebody can actually press a button and say hey yes I want this bill to go forward. Um, members can request drafts for bills all the way through December 1st, and they don't actually have to decide whether or not they're going to submit the bill for consideration during the session until literally the morning of the first day of the general assembly, which is Wednesday, January 14th.
173Um, we've started to see uh information about the bianial rebenchmark. I know you talked about that a little bit at your at your budget session. Um, next week the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Finance Committee both have their retreats. Um, so there should be some additional information from them on uh kind of initial projections on rebenchmarking. It probably won't be at the division by division level. That won't come until uh the state board of education gets their presentation, which we're told isn't happening until their December meeting. Um, so I think December 10th and 11th is the next uh the next state board meeting and we'll see the more formal pro uh presentation on rebenchmarking and we'll also see the governor's budget um you know coming out in in December. Uh, one other thing that's
174happening and something actually literally happened today because the state board is is meeting today is we're seeing some recommendations coming from some of those off session uh committee uh things that we had talked about in during our September meetings. Uh so there there's already kind of the beginnings of legislation being talked about um as a result of those off session work uh work work sessions. Uh we've seen uh legislation on diabetes care. Uh there's going to be some legislation coming out of the state board as part of their uh standards of quality prescriptions uh dealing with universal screening for um for gifted students and uh some additional or changes in how uh they're requesting us to do um uh employee background checks and a couple of other things that are literally on the agenda today
175as we're speaking. Um but we're starting to see those. We're starting to get a little bit of a picture of what what legislation lies ahead once we get to session. I just put this here. You can you can look at this at your leisure, but this kind of fleshes out the the the eb and flow of the general assembly session. It's a long session, so it's a 60-day session. Um there was some discussion about when budget amendments might come out and when crossover was. That's typically kind of late February in a long session. So that's uh that's a point at which we'll see the House budget amendments, the Senate budget amendments, and we'll also know what bills have passed in at least one of the two chambers at that point. And then in terms of
176local um we'll talk about this a little bit more later, but you're in the middle of take your legislator to school month. Um I know many of you have had meetings and have meetings scheduled as well. Uh the VSBA conference is next week. uh December you have your joint budget meeting and and uh work with the Fairfax County uh Board of Supervisors. They have a reception on I think it's December 16th uh where they invite general assembly members and I believe you all are invited to that as well. Um and then in January, the Saturday before session, so that's January 10th, uh there's a a delegation work session that's held over at the government center. And typically we have a a member from from our board go over and and give a few remarks to
177that uh to that committee. Okay. Now moving on to the meat of what we're going to talk about here today which is the legislative program and your legislative priorities. Um just as a reminder legislative program is a is a it's a annual uh document that you all review. It [clears throat] includes uh you know your statements on state and federal legislation, policy regulations, just anything that you can think of or anything that you know we can kind of dream up in terms of of what might be issues that come before the general assembly or or the board of education or other policymaking bodies. Um the document is incredibly helpful for us obviously as as as staff because it gives guidance in terms of where you all are um with with where you stand on policy
178issues. During the general assembly session in particular, things moving incredibly quickly and we're dealing with a huge volume of issues all at once. Um so to have kind of those guide guidelines in place for us is is is extremely helpful. Um and then you know just as a reminder the program is in essence a perpetual document. So unless you affirmatively make changes to it the language from the previous year carries forward to the language in the next year. Um and then in terms of the components of the program uh you've got a joint position that you all hold with the board of supervisors. You have a position uh or you you have a set of priorities for um state issues. you have a set of priorities for federal issues. Um and then you have standing
179positions. So kind of the the long portion of the document which focuses in on kind of the soup to nuts um uh issues that that we deal with. So the first the first component is your joint legislative position with the uh the board of supervisors. Um this is language that shows up in both documents. Uh it's primarily focused on education funding. Um the county board won't finalize their program until December 9th. So we'll be close in terms of uh your adoption I think which is scheduled for December 4th and their adoption on December 9th. Um, as part of the agenda item, uh, there were hand or there were individual pages that were included as part of the, uh, as as part of the whole work section package. Um, that includes the language, the specific language
180for the joint position. Um, I don't know if you want to pull that up to look at it here or if it's sufficient that it's part of the the work session. I'll I'll I'll leave that to you. Um, if it it'll be the K12 funding. Yeah, it' be that one. >> Yes. So, just a reminder, we did not have that at the last work session. So, that is new. >> Yeah, it it it's actually largely the it's it's largely similar language to what your current joint position is. Um, one thing that I think the board of supervisors is doing this year is they're streamlining the language on all of their positions. So, this looks a little bit shorter than than it has in the past. Um but it covers the same the same issues that
181it has in the past in terms of of advocacy for Jayark recommendations specifically costing it calling out cost of living issues. Uh specifically calling out you know some some issues that are specific to FCPS in terms of numbers of students versus percentages of students in terms of how formulas deal with that. Um and then also opposing particular things that may have a disproportionate effect on uh on Northern Virginia. So that I mean that that just gives you an idea of what what the language for that position and this position this specific language has already been presented to the board of supervisors as part of their ongoing legislative work. Um, so if we flip back to the presentation itself, >> Miss Lady, did you have a question? >> Yeah, sorry. Just because it's right now. Um,
182>> yeah, of course. >> I understand the LCI, but what advocacy has there been to change the SOQ to a lower number? Like when have we ever challenged the SOQs outside of how the LCI is budgeted based on them? Does that make sense? Like obviously we are below the SOQs for the state in so many areas. I'll pick social workers. Do we ever challenge the state and say as an advocacy point it should be one to 250 not one to a thousand? I >> I I I think the the short answer to that is yes. Yeah, because the standards of quality is is an accumulation of a whole bunch of different standards and there's staffing pieces and there's a bunch of other things that go into it. Each one of those individual components um there
183has been legislation there's been legislation about school nurses, about counselors, about social worker, psychologists. Um so yeah, those come up and part of your language in your program talks about increasing a number of those specific areas. Please continue. I went rogue there. >> Uh so the next and and I'll I'll I'll put this up here for a minute and we can pull the actual language of the uh the priorities up in in just a second. But if you remember during your September meetings, you identified kind of these in the the bolded areas were kind of the seven areas that you had identified as your your priority priority areas going forward. You had state funding, accountability assessments, facilities, school meals, freedom of information act changes, and then educational governance. Um, so all of those were kind
184of the broad pieces. And then what the language here does is takes those broad points of advocacy and tries to narrow it down to some specific items um that you can give a little bit more clarity to legislators or a little bit more clarity to the public of well, what do you want to see in terms of state funding? what do you want to see in terms of changes to uh accountability? Um, so you know, this is a a kind of a a brief a summary of what's there, but if we can pull up the state priorities document, and I apologize, there are a lot of words there, but um, so a couple things that I want to highlight. Uh, one is in that preamble sentence, um, there is some adjustment in the language that
185specifically talks about unfunded mandates. um you have some oblique language and you do have some language in your in your governance position in your in the main body of the program. Um but just wanted to highlight that talking about unfunded mandates from the state um is is included in this language. And then as you can see for each individual part so for state funding the advocacy would be to make sure that the bionary rebenchmark is fully funded and then uh we call out a a several items within the JARK report. You know, obviously the advocacy is for everything within JARK, but this gives an idea of some specific things that uh that the uh the general assembly could address um having to do with how salary calculations are done and and how much funding we
186get back for that, which is the the issue about weighted averages. Um, one of the biggest components of JARK for FCPS uh had to do with um the state doing a better job of recognizing cost of living differences between jurisdictions. And that would go a huge huge way. I think fully at least a third of all the funding that was recommended that could have that could come back to FCPS in terms of the 2023 numbers that Jark was using um was actually attributed to the change in the cost of living um adjustment. So that was a a huge huge component of that of that uh report for FCPS. Um same thing I don't know if we want to go through these the with a lot of granularity. I will highlight on assessment um that we
187do have some language in there on some specific uh changes that we we may want to see based on legislation that's that's occurred in the past and and adjustments and clarifications that may need to be made there. Um and then uh I think the the second to last one I I will highlight as well which is Freedom of Information Act. I know there's been some discussion and we'll we'll discuss it a little bit later as well. Um but this this picks up not just the issue of uh disparity in board size in terms of how open meeting laws apply but also I recall your discussion in September. Uh you talked about the proliferation of of records through because of electronic communications. Um and then also the expense of of posting po public notices. Um so
188again this is intended to take those broad areas of advocacy and give some much more actionable steps of hey here are things that can be done to address these issues. So, uh, we can flip back to the Yeah, we can flip back to the the main presentation. And then um we actually don't need to go to the the full federal priorities document because for the most part what what [clears throat] this says here is what the priorities have picked up which really is just a continued discussion and a continued advocacy for you know not only not only at this point preservation of existing funding for um for education funding programs coming from the federal government but uh enhancements to those to those programs. uh you've had standing positions for for years and years on additional
189funding for title one, additional funding for IDA, [snorts] particularly with the federal promise when IDA was first adopted of uh the federal government picking up 40% of the the cost of that. We're not even at 10% at this point. Um, so there's a lot of room for potential improvement, but given the current climate, you know, we do need to we do need to acknowledge that preservation of of this funding is is is paramount. So the next I think three slides are actually mostly things you have seen at both your September work sessions. Um we haven't gone through them in incredible detail, but these are all of the proposed changes that are embedded in that strikethrough document uh that's been available again at the September work sessions and also at the um at at this work
190session today. Um in terms of places where we've been able to eliminate positions because things have happened that have been that that have achieved the goals of the of the program positions themselves. um new positions, new issues, new areas of emphasis. Um you can see kind of them listed here. The next two slides uh are all about uh accreditation um and uh and and state accountability. Um because there's been so much that's happened at the state level. You've got the new school performance framework coming out um and a lot of a lot of discussion about that. uh you've you've had discussions about aligning IB diplomas with advanced studies diploma requirements. Um the one that I do want to highlight is at the very end of this slide uh which is a new a new point
191of uh a new position that we've added. Um there has been some talk at the state level apparently about moving away from using SOS as a way to verify credits which would be an enormous change in in Virginia. Um but apparently Virginia is one of only a few states that uses its standardized tests in that way. Um so there may be some movement in that. So we wanted to make sure that we had some language in there to acknowledge that if that conversation comes up that it's something that you we can definitely jump into um as as as part of your advocacy that change alone would have I mean it would have a ripple effect. it would affect a lot of the things that are talked about in some of the new changes in how
192um SOS are administered because it would change take some change the nature of the SOS making it more of an accountability piece not necessarily tied to individual students. So just wanted to highlight that as a new language that's been added above and beyond what we had in in the September versions. Uh again, federal legislative program positions really haven't changed. uh substantially. I guess they haven't changed at all since the September work sessions. Um we did have one area where we could eliminate a position because the state has aligned state and federal accountability and then several new positions mostly dealing with just support for funding and particular programs. as my I can't advance. Thank you. So, um I did I did include a slide here because uh I know that Mr. Fr had had submitted and
193had submitted even in the September uh language for some potential changes uh to the program. So, some potential amendments that are above and beyond the current the current draft. Um, so I just wanted to highlight those here. They're also Okay. Um, so so uh I know that that was included as part of the agenda item. Uh, Mr. Fr's uh potential uh amendments to the to the program. They're highlighted here. I actually did put a placeholder in here because I saw that Mr. done had had submitted something as well um about board open meeting requirements. Um if if we want to pull up uh the if we have those documents available. >> Mr. Mallaloy, after you go through your presentation, we're going to go through all the board members of the We'll come back to those
194amendments and then we'll take consensus on them and be able to move on. Okay. So, we can go we can go back to the main presentation then. Thank you. But this this this is just like broad highlights of what those uh those uh proposals were about. Um so you as a board have talked specifically about being interested in in actually initiating legislation, initiating budget amendments. So I wanted to try and highlight on this slide a few areas where um either that it's it's kind of a ripe area for us to to to initiate something or alternatively uh to share with you uh things that we have heard from other jurisdictions, other legislators, other advocates of legislation that we already know is coming forward. Um, I know there's been a good deal of discussion about uh
195legislation around the changes in so timing and administration. Um, so we've talked about that. Uh, something for you all to consider would be uh some JARK uh recommendations as as individual budget amendments. Um, last year there was a budget amendment on the linear weighted average and that's something that would be easily picked up and and put back in by by a member. Um the the thing about the uh the the cost of living adjustments um has a much higher price tag, but it's definitely something that could be teed up. Um just to let you know, I believe, and I I've not been able to to confirm, but I believe that that was being discussed um at the Virginia Association of Counties um annual legislative meeting. Um so when we get a little bit more clarity
196on that, we'll we'll let you know. Um and then sunshine laws. A couple of of areas that you've you've talked about um that could be could be legisl turned into legislation for somebody to carry. Uh both a FOYA study of electronic records and how they're handled and and and that sort of thing. And then also the issue of the meeting requirements and how it affects different boards differently. Um the next four are bills that we are aware that someone else, some other jurisdiction, some other legislator are actually putting in. Um we've talked about the Virginia growth assessment and how our waiver for uh not having to do it and using an alternative measurement um is expiring after this year and it's an ex a substitution we'd like to see um extended. Uh so we know
197that's coming. We know langu assessment on or legislation on native language assessment legislation on the addressing that international balorate advanced studies issue. Um potentially legislation we've had legislation for the last several years on school meals. Um a couple of things that didn't make this list that I can tell you about as well. Um uh one is uh from from a a staff perspective, there's been some discussion about uh virtual drivers education. Again, you have a standing legislative position about that, but there have been some changes at the state level that have made it more difficult for us to access the state's curriculum. Um so there there may be some interest in pursuing legislation on on that issue. Um I I'm aware that there is likely to be clarifying language for the cell phone uh legislation
198coming forward. Um so just to to be aware which may be different than our current policy um but that's that's likely to come forward as well. Um that's that's what we know now. Obviously uh there are more things as I said because the uh the the work the work groups the off session work groups are putting out their legislative uh proposals. We'll start to see more and more pieces of legislation that we can uh respond to. And with that we actually have a couple slides beyond this if you want me to hit those two and then we can circle back to this. I think this may be in not quite the right spot but Okay. >> So, we'll just take a quick pause right now before we get to those next slides because we'll have
199some specific actions with those where if board members at this point wanted to ask any clarifying questions of Mr. Mallaloy or anything else related to the presentation, um please hold your comments regarding board member amendments because we'll go through that in just a little bit. So, we'll open up the floor for any questions or um comments about what's been presented. Uh Mr. Moon. >> Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize who was first. >> Mr. Fr was first, followed by Mr. Moon. >> Thank you uh [clears throat] for the presentation and for the work uh to get it here. Um you mentioned all the work that goes into this is the stuff that the public doesn't see, right? the work that goes into preparing for this um you know let's say from the day after
200the general assembly session ends to our work begins on the legislative program for the next general assembly session. Can you talk a little bit more detail about the work that you all are doing in between to move the ball forward for the school system? So I think um if we can go back the the slide earlier in terms of kind of the year- round advocacy I think is is kind of the the key to that is just you know maintaining communications um it's I I don't remember it's like slide three or four um you know maintaining communications you know not only with our there we go slide four um you know we we try to maintain a presence as much as we possibly can at all of the off session discussions that are happening. I'll
201give you an example. Um my my specialist is upstairs watching the state board of education meeting right now. Um they they meet monthly uh and their their their discussion is going to generate some potential legislative issues. So we we we continue to to monitor them and and advocate with them. Um we try to maintain a presence at at as many uh education related or education policy related um off session uh meetings as we can. Um meet with legislators, have discussions uh with them. Um, you know, certainly at the end of a legislative session, we we work in in terms of uh helping the school system with implementation and then as you implement laws from the previous year, you see that there may have been unintended consequences or changes that need to be addressed for the
202next session, then that kind of folds into the the the staff recommendations that come in through the legislative program. Um, so I think that that gives you an some examples of that that kind of ongoing work. Um, [clears throat] are you meeting with legislative staffers in this off season, too? >> Um, yeah, as as as we need to. Um, you know, we we try to we try to reach out and we try to have discussions where we can, whether it's, you know, piggybacking on a meeting or or initiating individual meetings with them. Um, but yeah, we do we do try to do that as much as we can in the off session. And I also encourage my constituents to attend the town halls that my the delegation that serves Providence District have. Do you all
203attend those the town halls that they all have before and after session? >> We typically don't know about those to be perfectly blunt. Um we don't we we don't we don't get invitations to those. So >> are you on their email list? >> We are in some cases yes, but in most cases no. Um because I think they're they're mostly for constituents. Um, we don't so we we don't we don't get the direct information um like we don't see the the weekly newsletters that they put out. I would strongly suggest that you subscribe to those after this work session because extremely useful information to anybody who's looking to impact legislation is included in those, including the way that they talk about their bills, the way they talk about what's happening in Richmond, their public events,
204the things they're going to, the things they're bragging about. I know that board members here have corrected uh newsletters in the past. >> So we do >> I don't usually express shock but >> no >> that is flumxing. >> I I I I I think I may have misspoke. Yes, we do. We do. It's we do receive that information. It's not as systematic as it should be and we will correct that but we do receive a lot of that information >> and there are 14 new members at least right I don't know how many new uh members of the minority there are but um whose lists we could be on you know in addition to our own delegation being on the lists of all the other members would be good for finding people we are
205sympatico with right is there somebody in in uh Hampton Roads pushing something that we could partner with because then maybe they'll partner with there's all kinds of things that could be found there. Speaking of which, um in anticipation of VSBA, I had a a call um and Nicole Cole uh who is a Spennsylvania member uh who was just elected to the House of Delegates. So, she'll be joining the growing school board, former school board member caucus in Richmond. Um, I know how busy they are preparing for all of this and uh I do appreciate the work that went into providing board members with materials and support for Take Your Legislature to um school month. I uh was able to go to Oakton Elementary School with David Boliva and we had some really great discussions with
206staff and with Principal Kelly and then Senator Sim and I uh with Delegate Seabold. uh we went to Freedom Hill Elementary School uh and had some great conversations with Dr. Sapodka and uh several uh classes and in both cases we were led on tours and discussions by students which was a a new highlight. So uh I will hold the rest of my comments for I you know generally speaking I'm fine with all of the other things that have been talked about in terms of updates to the program. They align with what we've been talking about the last few sessions. Um, and I'll hold the rest of my comments until we pick up the amendment conversation. >> Thank you, Mr. Fresh. Mr. Moon. >> Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Uh, just like Commissioner F, I'm
207generally supportive of our programs. Uh, and as far as amendments are concerned, I'll wait. But my immediate attention and interest will be on meeting requirements and the B size. the couple of amendments that have surfaced. Uh with that said, I might have missed your presentation on slide number 20 related to native language [snorts] assessment and school mirrors. Could you just briefly explain those one more time >> on the issue of native language assessment? >> Native language assessment and also school mirrors which is at the bottom. So, so, uh, there was there's been legislation introduced in the last couple of sessions and I think it will be reintroduced to introduce the concept of having, uh, subject matter assessments done in a native language as opposed to in English. Um, because right now a language learner, um,
208they they take the same assessment as every other student in English. They may be given a dictionary for translation, but they they're they still are required to take the English language version. Most states in the country have at least some allowances uh you know like even uh Texas and and and uh Florida have uh subject matter assessments in Spanish and in other languages. Um this is just introducing that concept to Virginia. Um and that it it's kind of part of a much broader conversation about um a new assessment contract that you know the the contract with Pearson has expired. So, we're moving forward with a new uh request for proposal from a bunch of different vendors and trying to embed that concept of having native language assessment variations included as as an option. >> That's
209us too FCPS as well. We are we are currently doing that. Um we are trying to do is that I'm trying to get >> it it that would at the state level it would it would be embedded in the so system itself. >> Okay. And what about school meals at the bottom? >> School meals. Um so there have been various proposals the last few years. One was for universal meals across the board. So lunches and breakfast. Uh last year there was a legislation and a budget amendment to do just school breakfasts. Um we would anticipate that one version or the other of those are going to are going to come back. Um whether it be universal meals across or just universal breakfast. >> Okay. Oh, thank you. Uh this one has to do with my
210next question has to do with composition of the board of education. The work of the board board of education sometimes or a lot of times may be dictated by legislation but they can also do their own work. uh with all nine members current members being a governor Ynan's appointees how likely will that to change with new governor coming on do they normally wait until their terms expire even though there's a new governor with might have a completely different agenda >> yeah the the state board of education is actually a unique entity in Virginia in that it is actually n it's one it's the only um executive branch uh board that's specifically named in the constitution. Um so it has it has kind of a different status than any other board or any other commission that
211that exists in in Virginia. The normal process and the normal flow of how the board of education is populated is um there's nine members and they're appointed to staggered terms. So every year a certain number of people come off the board and the new governor gets the chance to appoint members. Um what happened last year and the reason why the state board became majority uh uh new governor appointees faster than usual is Virginia also has a very strange system where the uh the positions themselves have to be um approved by the general assembly but the actual appointments are made six months prior to them being approved. So you had a situation last year and you have a situation technically speaking again this year where there are at least two members on the board of education
212right now who are serving who were appointed as of July 1 who have not yet been confirmed by the general assembly. They won't be confirmed until the general summit comes back in January. Um what happened a couple of years ago was that those those positions that were already sitting on the board for six months were not confirmed by the general assembly. So they became vacant. So that allowed the governor to make additional appointments above and beyond what he normally would have done. Um that's how so normally the board is supposed to be staggered. The concept is is that no one governor controls the majority of the board until the very very end of their term and then they continue forward to try and smooth out policy variations especially if you have wild swings in in
213terms of partisanship or in terms of policy prescriptions. So just just to clarify one point. >> Yes. >> Uh so couple of members in the board of education have not been confirmed by general assembly. Correct. and general assembly being in in the hands of certain political party may not go along with the appointments of those two that means today they become automatically vacant after a certain point or >> so if if their if their confirmation fails that's when their positions would >> there has to be a confirmation vote >> yes they would there would have to be their their confirmation vote would have to fail >> and then there could poss possibility of that. >> Yes. >> With then you governor appointing her own >> correct >> choices >> for those particular seats. >> Those
214two seats. >> Yeah. >> Thank you, Mr. Moon. Mr. Dunn. >> Uh thank you. Uh I wanted to ask uh the legislative priorities and the legislative program is drafted in very broad and somewhat vague terms. Uh so and and I understand that might be necessary given you're not sure what bills will be proposed by legislators. Uh, but I wanted to ask whether FCPS perhaps on its own initiative or perhaps in combination with other school divisions ever drafts legislative language and shops it around to specific state legisl specific legislators uh to see if they can get uh a specific bill or amendment passed. >> The the the short answer to that is yes. um both both in terms of FCPS um we have in the past um both helped to draft legis legislative language and also
215uh budget amendments and then you know in in terms of broad initiatives uh coming out of whether it's the superintendent's association or the school board's association or other school divisions um they're they're also involved in in helping to draft um the the specifics of the legislation not so not just the conceptual area or the the the issue area, but the specific language that would go into the code. Um, so yes, we've we've done both. >> Uh, and how how common is that or how frequently is it? Every year or once in a blue moon. >> Um, it it honestly depends on the year. It depends on uh the the kind of the board's initiative. It depends on um you know staff initiative. if there's there's particular things that uh that uh need need to be
216specifically addressed. Um and it also depends on the willingness of individual legislators, right? Because at the end of the day, we can draft anything we want, but if a legislator isn't willing to pick it up and put it in, um you know, we we can't we can't get much much further with that. Um so I would say it varies just uh from year to year and and from issue to issue. Obviously, this is your your day job, but my my in my conversations with legislators and maybe the ones I deal with are different than others who are uh in Richmond, uh you know, they their ask since they have almost no staff uh is to to me has been bring me, you know, a draft and an explanation of why you want to do something.
217and they ask the same of their uh constituents and you know there have been bills drafted by everyone from boy scouts to retirees and uh and that gives them you know something concrete to review and and you know in terms of our advocacy if we bring them something specific that they can respond to and and perhaps iterate um that might get you uh where you want to go faster than simply reiterating policy points. And I I say that as someone who dealt with uh the federal legislature, Congress, uh for many years on behalf of federal agencies, and the constant ask was we don't have enough staff, similar to Richmond, although obviously Congress uh has more staff than than Richmond does. Uh and but they always wanted specific bill language that they could react to, shop
218around other legislators to iterate if they were interested in the subject. Um so just suggesting that as as a path forward. >> Thank you Mr. Don Miss Dixit. >> Thank you Mr. Mallaloy for the presentation. Um I actually was you know during the last few months we've been talking about the new cut score for SOS and which are going to impact. Is that been addressed in one of our uh recommendation from the staff recommendation? I didn't see that exact uh term used that uh kind of resetting the S SO scores or reviewing them again. So I don't know if anybody wants to take that. Uh to be honest, off the top of my head, I don't think that we that actual language is used anywhere um in terms of of talking about the specific scores
219that are used to determine whether or not a student passes uh passes an assessment. Um that's something that we certainly could could draft. Um but I don't think it's directly um addressed by specific language on cut scores. >> Dr. Reed Yes ma'am. I think it should be Michael. So perhaps we could draft something if it's a priority of the boards as well. >> And the only reason is impact the Commonwealth of Virginia all district. So I think this is one of the things which we work with the other divisions and kind of put the that forward because it's half of our schools will pass but their majority of school district will have failing schools uh in that measure. Um and the other thing I know at the last few uh years a couple of years
220on the board that VOE has been coming after you know us on in different ways and you know trying to take our money to like you know literally um just one issue after other. So am I uh is this situation going to change? Uh so what I what I can say is is that you know obviously when you have a change in administration um the governor has the ability to change personnel. Um so the governor would have the ability to change would have the appointment process over the superintendent of instruction um over the uh the secretary of education. Um so if you put if you put um individuals into those positions that have different priorities that will kind of flow down through the process. Um now the one thing again to back to Mr. Moon's
221point about the state board of education education you've got the department of education who deals with a lot of the administrative pieces but you have the state board of education that deals with a lot of the broad policy pieces. Um, so there there may be some tension created there because you've got previous administration with new administration. Um, but I think I think it would be safe to to anticipate there would be a change um just based on campaign campaign literature and and discussions that have happened out in in the public um that there may be different uh different approaches to to particular education issues that come from the new governor coming in. >> Um, so thank you so much. So we are talking more about the state legislations right now. What about the federal and
222I see a slide 18 there's federal legislative program positions. Um who who are we going uh with these um new positions and elimination. >> So I I mean these are really just adjustments in your existing positions. Your existing positions on federal legislation um deal with a lot lot broader areas than than these. These are some areas that were not not already addressed under the under the program. Um so you have positions on on special education. You have positions on um title one so dealing with with at risk populations. Um title three a bunch of different things that are already covered. These are just the additions. Um, federal policym I I think I could probably accurately describe it as incredibly tricky right now. Um, just it's it's it's much much more difficult from a policy standpoint
223to follow uh what's happening at the federal level than it ever has been in in the past um in terms of of actual policym and very little comes out of Congress anymore in terms of policy other than the budget. Um and even the budgets are, you know, tend to be a a continuing resolution from from previous budgets. Um so it's an incredibly tricky time to deal with federal federal policy in general. >> Okay. Um so yeah, kind of we have to wait and see for some time. U so again, let's lastly back to you know take your legislature to uh school once. I think we are all are taking that um you know action and uh I'm taking like four legislators um two different schools that had a very good visit with to Popular Tree
224Elementary with u with my delegate Carrie Delaney and u she uh really enjoyed that school. her kids have gone to that school before and we are planning a few more trips visits I should say uh with Senator Kapowski um delegate Helmer and delegate Shen u and I think u couple of more so we are taking this like we want them to come to our uh schools see our students in action and they're all from Fairfax County most of our representatives so they have either had kids in schools or they have current students So uh their familiarity is really good like I'm I'm seeing them um really uh interested in our schools right now. So definitely looks uh really good when we visit with them. So thank you for everything. Yeah, >> thank you Miss Dixit.
225>> Before we move on, I just want to uh trickle back to the the issue on cut scores. I think one reason why the legislative program never has historically talked about cut scores is because cut scores historically has been kind of a largely administrative process. Um, I think it's a little bit different this year. There was a change in how they were they were uh done. Um, so I think that's that's at least one reason why it's never really been an issue for for discussion um until until this year. >> Dr. Re. >> Yeah, thank you Dr. Anderson. I wanted to add on to that that we did provide comment to the board of education and I believe I shared that with um the board. Uh, but I agree that if there's a way to
226legislatively lock that down for future um planning, I think it's important. I do think that the board of education has listened and is contemplating a phasing program for the cut score shift. Um, >> though I wonder about the need for it at all. >> Thank you, Dr. Reid. Miss Eismoiser, >> thank you. Um, and I may have missed a bit of the discussion about the phasing, but one thing I think seeing how some of these rapid changes, not just in the cut scores, but this the accountability standards and the metrics that are being implemented even before some of these changes are fully even flushed out by the board of education. I remember the change in accountability where we asked what are the three C's and no one could explain them to us and you know
227um changing it in the middle of the year where we couldn't change student schedules but we were being dinged on what classes students were taking. Um, so legislatively, and I would love to see potentially if my colleagues agree on this, but even potentially not just mentioning it, but uh, but legislation, but I wonder if legislatively we can ask our delegation to lead the charge in more guidance to the board of education in terms of in general phasing for major accountability or so changes because the challenge isn't necessarily for us saying, "Hey, we don't want we all agree we want to have good accountability. these standards. We want to make sure our schools are teaching our kiddos and they're they're learning what they need to learn. But when you do it in this gotcha way where
228you're changing standards in the middle of the year without even fully defining what those standards are, it doesn't help that schools change their teaching methodology when they don't know what they're supposed to teach to because they haven't defined it for us. So I think there's some room here in legislation, especially with the opportunity we have to talk about a process that VDOE must follow for making major changes to accountability to mandate phasing to mandate community engagement. I mean, I know some of that's already there. So they're not throwing things on schools during the school year, which seems to me less about actual accountability and more about showing schools are failing because it's really hard to meet a standard when the person putting the standard on you won't even define it. So I I think that
229would be something I would advocate for is some sort of legislation around creating norms and standards for how accountability and so cut scores and things like this are changed and the timing of that to give schools the best chance to be able to meet new accountability standards um and support as well. The other thing I I just want to talk about separate from the package itself but just the timing and support provided. I know last year I had one pager from my taking my legislator to school visits and I don't see that this year. I know um we were surprised by the so bill last year that none of us knew about. So I'm curious if there's been changes to processes and information so that way we're more informed in a timely manner of some
230of these major things and given more guidance. I remember you coming at the last minute in the morning of the state visits with like a a little handout, a little sheet of paper. So I just wonder if there's some sort of process that we can put in place that for Michael Malloy from your office, you know, 4 days before we go down to legislative visits in February, we have X, Y, and Z documentation and a chance to talk to you about our questions in hand, right? We we have I know you send us the big Friday letter, but how can we better flag this one's really important? Like I don't know how that so bill got missed, but I think there's some need to look at from your office. I know you have more support
231now. How to better help us engage. So I those are the two things I'd lift up. >> Yeah. I mean I I I can say in terms of a process obviously you know what what happened last year we are we are working on changing the communication in terms of how information gets to you because you're right it's it's a fire hose of information every week. Um I mean that's just the nature that's the nature of the general assembly session is you know you're dealing with with dozens if not hundreds of pieces of legislation. Um, but doing a better job of trying to prioritize and and lift up the very specific things that need to be on on your all's radar. Um, that's definitely something that we're building into our normal uh our normal process. Um,
232you know, we we've been doing some some behind-the-scen things. Um, so you'll see some some changes in how that communication goes forward. Um, and also, you know, we we know in advance um that that you all are interested in coming down to Richmond and meeting with legislators. Um, and that gives us a chance to be able to put together some of that documentation a little bit earlier. Um, to, you know, know that you're interested in doing that and that you're interested in coming to talk to folks. Um, so that, you know, the the the the the lead time is is certainly helpful in terms of, you know, developing information, but also making it presentable and everything else. >> I'll take a go back. Thank you. >> Yes, absolutely. Um, Miss Lady, >> thank you and
233thank you to [clears throat] everyone uh for the hard work on this. Um, so a couple things just come flying in my brain as I'm sitting here. One of them is the reality that when I was campaigning and meeting with my local delegates and senators um that there is a huge gap in understanding the implementation of what they put forward in an actual school. Um, and I can't be specific about all the things we talked about. certainly was something related to to discipline that seemed very logical from their lens and I don't recollect what it was but it is important. Um another note I have written down here is is Perkins and CTE because of all that money and I remember when I was working in the system I was like why is the CTE
234program growing and growing and growing when we have other people who have work interests outside of what I would define that as. So to that point, I don't know that and I'm going to pick on Dr. Reid in a minute here. I don't know um to what extent we're advocating for I I I don't know if this is the right terminology, but double credentiing for example, like a data science course, you know, could that be a math credit, but could it also be a CTE credit, right? Um because, you know, one of the things that frustrates our students is the number of required courses in the advanced studies track. If you don't take summer school and if you take a world language every year, you literally are allowed to take six electives. That's it. Okay.
235And people have an appetite for more. I was talking about double credentiing. I'm not sure if that's the right terminology where a course gets you a credit in science and perhaps also >> crossrediting. I I I've never even heard us us discussing that. That would be another advocacy point for the Virginia Department of Education is that I mean this is all trickle down. The end of the day we're a school system because of kids who want to go to school who want to learn and if I want to learn in this pathway but you're pigeon holing me in this pathway it's not fair. So I just think that we need to be more robust in those conversations. So um and then I'm going to go back to my my interruption earlier around uh standards of
236quality. I I I understand it's it's sort of it's I I'll go with my colleague uh Mr. done around writing specific um bills. But I I I think that the world has changed, right? I mean, like when I started as a school counselor, you know, 40 years ago, I could do school counseling. I could do academic advising. I could do college advising. I wasn't triaging the number of kids who were cutting the number of kids who were using the number of kids who are coming from broken homes. Like the world has changed. But what when was the last time they changed the SOQs for certain mental health? But it's also the kids are bringing those same issues into the classroom which is why our class sizes need to be smaller. Right? So I just I
237want to be more deliberate around maybe advocating for change in ratios which then in turn because the LCI would bring us more money. So I I I can say in terms of the the standards of quality um one of the challenges of a conversation about the standards of quality is that when the state if if the state were to change a ratio for instance if it were to one to 250 or counselors or something um it has both a state impact so it has a state fiscal impact but because of the LCI and because of the split in terms of state and local shares it has a local impact as well. Um, and that's where the conversation tends to get more challenging is imposing that additional local because the SOQs are not fully funded by
238the state. We don't get 100% of the dollars for every position that the SOQ's requires. That's always been a challenge in terms of those state ratios and I think we as a system have shied away from advocating for those specific ratios because it reduces our flexibility. Um, but it also places that additional local burden on us and as you talked about during your your budget conversation, that burden is is fairly substantial and it's, you know, 70 80% of the total funding for those positions has to come from local sources as opposed to from state sources. Now, if it's above if it's something that's above and beyond, and I think this is an important uh important thing to to kind of keep in mind, if FCPS is doing something that's above and beyond where the SOQs
239are, and the SOQs are changed to meet our standard or to come closer to where we are, that then means that something that we were funding 100% locally, we now are getting some state funds from. That was one of the reasons why the um uh the uh the support cap changes were so welcome was because we were funding well above and beyond where the support cap had us funding. So by the state upping the support cap and providing additional state funding that was now state funding coming back for something that we previously were funding entirely locally. So that's those are the areas that we try to focus in on are places where we're already going above and beyond and getting that additional kind of state subsidy for it as opposed to you the the areas
240where it would require us to go out and hire a bunch of new >> you're you're you're that's exactly what I'm talking about where we are doing it >> and it's and it's because it's the way it needs to be done for quality education not to make go below something we're not do. We're we're the best. Okay. and we're doing the best we can do but with with less and less money. But that that's the point I'm making is exactly what you talked about. Thank you. >> Thank you so much uh Miss Anderson and then I will take my turn and Miss Marin will as well. Mr. Mallaloy, we only have less than an hour left, so I'm asking for more concise responses to our questions. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um I I don't
241think that this is an requested amendment, but I am going to just speak to um my wheelhouse just a little bit in the fact that the format of this document is hard to follow. And I know that we've done a an extensive amount of work over a period of time to get it to be more but there are a few things that we could do that would make it a lot easier. I think that we need to have them broken into categories that supports and opposes under each one if there is something that goes with each because otherwise it's too hard to try to read through the bullets to get to the point. And the other aspect of it is it doesn't need to be it doesn't need to be lettered in terms of the
242entire document because it insinuates that something is more important than something else. If at the top we just say these are provided in alphabetical order, we don't have to actually create it in a traditional outline format which makes it harder to read overall and it insinuates something is more important than something else because it's lower on the list. So there are just some there are some minor tweaks. The other thing is we have more in here under so you know state testing than we have before. We need subheaders within there to break up in pieces of information the same way we do have under have under state funding. So there's very this is a um resource for our legislators to be able to quickly go and so if sometimes my my perspective and I don't
243think just our legislators are using it I think probably when you have people around the state that are doing things with education we are we are the big dog in the room like they want to know and we spend a lot of time and ef effort to make sure so we need to have this be as readable as humanly possible and I just I strongly think that there are some there are some easy tweaks that we could make that would make it readable. Um, I want to make sure that the PDF that coordinates with it is all linkable within the document so it becomes that bible that everybody's going to because if there's pieces in here, um, it would just be it would be really awesome to see this as something that's a very solid
244resource. So, I'm I'm >> I know it's alphabetical, but it doesn't need to be lettered like each each thing doesn't need a letter. Okay, thank you. I will take my turn seeing that there are no other speakers. Um, couple of things I wanted to follow up on. On page 20, you talked about how the final four, the last four bullets were already bills that were going to be carried. Did you have any additional information as to who would be um those who are presenting these bills? So my understanding is is that the Virginia growth assessment substitution bill will be carried by um Sam Razul and David Sudterline. They've carried versions of it in the past. It's been something that the Brono um Rono area has has long advocated for. Um native language assessment, I believe
245that Miss Cohen uh may pick that up and uh she's had that in the past and so has um uh Senator Favola. Um she she had a Senate version of that. Uh international balorate advanced studies. I believe that Senator Salem may be carrying legislation. I know it's something that's been really championed by the uh Falls Church uh city school board. Um so I believe they've been in discussions with him. And then on school meals, uh Senator Rome and uh delegate um uh Bennett Parker have carried legislation on on school meals as well before. Um, so they're they're they're the likely patrons of of those. >> Thank you. The reason why I asked is because this is another opportunity for us to connect with those individuals to fortify their their their bills to provide information because
246we have relationships with most of those individuals and if there's anything that we can just ensure that they have, I want to be able to make sure that we do that. Um, so that's one. Two, I I do agree that we need to have some specific language regarding the cut scores because in the same vein of what Miss Lady shared and having conversations with members. It's illuminating what they may not be aware of. I had this exact conversation with Delegate Herring and she's like, "Wow, this is enlightening." I shared a number of things with her which I will share with you all in just a little bit and it really I I think it hit a mark because there's an assumption that they are much more knowledgeable about the things that we deal with on
247a regular basis than they are and I think taking the opportunity to offer some education would be helpful. One of the things that I wonder is the cut scores while we are talking about phasing and the language I would also like for us to include in the phase and consistency of the cut scores. I have yet to understand why it's different numbers for different grade levels and different subjects. Not asking you, I know you have the same question, but it was always clear to every parent if your kid got a 400, they passed. If they had a 500, they were proficient. If they had a 600 was perfect score. Parents are not going to understand and remember all of these things. Or if they had a 375 to 399, they can retest. Having that consistency,
248it's so very helpful. So, I would like for that to be part of the language that you're going to call for us, not just to have the phasing or maybe not have it at all because that's not the way to um increase rigor, but the consistency of those scores across grade levels and across content areas is really important. Um, the other thing that I want to share, I I do agree with what Miss Anderson has shared. We have some space here where our document could be more legible uh or more easily more easily accessed. However, I worry about removing the letters because I have found myself because I've had this where a um a member of the delegate texted me while we were in a meeting and I just said go to page five letter
249M. I would hate for it to be bullets because it would be harder for me to say go to the fifth bullet. Maybe I miscounted or they miscounted, but it I I don't want to say that one is more important than the other, but it has to be delineated in some way. So, I I worry about that. I just wanted to raise it because I actually had that as an instance. Um, and I think those are my final state. Oh, thank you. I think those are my final statements. We have um three board members for gobacks which we're going to do for two minutes um Janet because we do need to get to some of the amendments work, some of the amendment work and some planning discussions for the briefing. Um, so I believe I
250think I have the order. Mr. FR was first and then and then Mr. Dunn and Miss um Seismheiser. >> Thank you. Um the the conversation around uh working on specific legislation reminded me of a a call I recently had with a constituent. Um and we were talking about funding and how some school divisions have delegates or senators that carry uh legislation that directly funds project X or project Y. and they cited Henriiko as an example where legislators had carried a funding bill um you know to fund this project in Henriiko Public Schools. Um and so this was in the context of a conversation around start times and bus costs and other things. And I think we could probably come with a giant menu of things that oneoff funding bills or whatever. Obviously you're not going
251to get them all in one year. Uh but um have we ever considered something like that where a a one-time desperate funding need was addressed by a legislator carrying that as an option? >> I I think if if uh Dr. Reed, I don't know if you want to take that or [laughter] >> I don't know what our history on that topic is, Michael. I only have four years of history and to my knowledge we have not asked uh since I've been here. I don't know what historically we've done. I do think that some of the work we're currently doing I think in terms of raising expectations for mathematics. I think the entire Commonwealth ought to be focusing on that and I know that there's some legislation of foot to talk about that uh particularly adding
252some graduation requirements uh and bringing back trig into algebra 2 for example. I know there's some legislation around that. Um but I do think it would be a a wise and prudent financial investment also to financially support that work not just here but everywhere in terms of credentiing of staff um perhaps class sizes around mathematics um supports I mean I think there's some really important work um I think the whole AI world at this time um it's a whole another conversation but I think there's a lot of work to do as I've said before I think it's our sputnick moment moment as a nation and we're we're on the sidelines at this at this time I feel like in our country on that topic and I think as far as Commonwealth has a commitment to
253leading education that would be something also that uh could be funded. So I mean I think to Mr. Fr's point I think it's grand idea. I just don't know what our history here is in doing that. So we haven't specific I mean we've we've pursued budget amendments but we haven't pursued one as granular as what you're talking about which is uh example that I can come up with is Lowden County asked for uh money for a recovery high school very specific in >> well to that end and I get that like you immediately get into >> horse trading in the general assembly around that kind of stuff which I get >> which is why I think like having two buckets one that is like a commitment to long-term investment, right? Like Dr. Reid was just
254talking about, those are not things that you would want and done be done in a year, right? But then there are other things that we could use that are an investment that is finite in a sense that it's not something that has to be renewed annually. It'd be great if we had a menu of those things and then those were options for our delegates when they're having those budget conversations. They know, oh gosh, there's $500,000 I could probably get in this f in this piece here. Here are the four things that I could try and get FCPS with that money, right? So, I'm not saying this is going to be easy. Um, given what people think of Fairfax County downstate. Um, but we, you know, we're in a bind just like every other public school
255system. The last really quickly sentence and then I'm done. Um, we can talk about LCI until, you know, the cows come home. Um, and there not a lot of cows in Fairfax County. Uh, um, it's not changing. Um, it is, uh, as unfortunate as it is for Fairfax County, that's not changing. But JARK is a solution or at least a partway their solution. So, I think it is behooves us to conduct advocacy around things that has a chance and heck of happening. >> Thank you. Uh, Mr. Adun, two minutes. >> Thank Thank you. Um, my question is, uh, how how much are we doing to, uh, actually achieve a reduction in state testing requirements? Because when you talk to teachers in elementary schools in particular, you know, there's the curriculum they have to teach during
256the year, but they have to step away from that curriculum in order to actually teach to the test, right? There's not just a test but pretests. >> Mr. Dunn, have you completed your thoughts? >> I I asked a question for Mr. Mallaloy. >> Can you please ask that again? I think we missed it over the barking. >> Sorry. Um my question is uh how much are we actually doing to reduce state testing requirements? Because when you speak to elementary school teachers, they uh spend a you know their their mission is to teach a certain curriculum, but they have to take time away two or three weeks at a time to not just teach to the test, prepare students to take this state test, um but also we have various pre-ESTs to kind of prepare them
257for that state test later on. And every time we take students away from the core curriculum to teach to the pre-EST or teach to the state test, that represents a departure really from uh you know benefiting students. Those state tests don't really benefit the students. They benefit the school division and maybe whatever the state wants to measure. But you know we we're not being student centric in this approach with state testing and all the pre-esting that goes with it. So what are we doing actively uh to actually achieve a reduction in those state testing requirements? Because it seems to me in reading this and looking at prior versions that there's a lot of copy and paste yeartoear as to state testing requirements and and I I just want to get at what are the active
258efforts we're making drafting legislation working with legislators to actually to actually benefit um our our teachers and our students. >> Mr. Malloy, very briefly please. There there has been legislation in several years to reduce uh state testing to the federal minimums. So reduce the number of uh of tests that are are required at the state level. Um that that tends to be an annual discussion in the general assembly. Um and I think a lot of what you're also talking about is instructional practice. Um which isn't necessarily legislative in terms of the pre-ESTs and preparation. And I mean obviously the importance of the test drives you know because the test flows into accountability because it flows into individual student uh achievement that that drives instructional practice and I think that may be a little bit of
259what you're talking about but there are annual discussions about reducing the number of tests. >> But but what are we doing? That's the question. Not there's legislation by someone. Are we drafting legislation? Are we pushing like we're the largest school system in the state. We should have outsiz influence. So what what are we as FCPS doing? >> We have not drafted specific legislation on that issue. >> I think >> Okay. So we're letting other people carry the ball on that. Is that correct? >> And we have not we have not drafted legislation on that issue. >> Okay. >> Um thank you Miss Seismore and then Miss Dixit and then Miss Mar. >> Thank you. I just wanted to go back a little bit on um some of the communications and I appreciate the com the
260conversation about improving communications this year and the fire hose and I and I agree it's a fire hose for you right that's just how our general assembly is set up with our very short 45day or 60-day sessions but I think and we talked a little bit about this with the so bill but what would be helpful is not just saying this one's really important or trying to flag which ones because I think in some ways they're all important right but giving us a little more guidance of this is a positive impacts of this one so you could should advocate for it. This is the potential negative impacts of this one and here are potential suggestions for fixes because as much as it's a fire hose for us, it is also a fire hose for the
261state delegation, right? And the more we can make it easy for them to guide a bill in whatever direction we may want to guide it, the more likely we're to be successful. So if we're just flagging problems, it leaves it up to us. Whereas as a government relations, you have the expertise and the and the historical knowledge to provide a solution. And I think if you can help us provide that solution, we're more likely to be effective in our advocacy. And um I know we do go down every year to Richmond. At least every year I've been on the board other than the COVID years. Um we did go down to Richmond. So I don't know if there's some communication laps as to when we go down, why it was maybe I think you mentioned
262something about knowing in advance when we're going to Richmond. I know do know we do that every year. So, I don't know if there's there was a scheduling thing last year where you didn't know in advance, but we should definitely work with your office to make sure you know in advance, but I can tell you that we often go down every year. So, you could probably plan for a visit sometime in, you know, before crossover. So, as your office is planning to help us out, I would imagine. I don't want to speak for anybody else. >> Yeah. So, but you know, >> in the past it's been during the VSSP conference, but I know a couple times by my previous term it was, but just just for your planning purposes, I can imagine you should
263know sometime in January, we'll probably go down. So, thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Dixit. >> I'll be real quick. Um, I feel like in the document which uh Miss Anderson was talking about the formatting and things like that, I feel like we need to have indexing just like we do in proposals, right? at least um like hyperlinks so we can get to that section quickly. Also I just after talking about AI like I don't know from all of us and all this you know meeting the moment everything I think we just need to have an own bullet point here as AI and we need to take a charge on that and create policy and and uh proposed policy and how we can do better and more in the school system. So that should be
264I think one of the priorities that should be like in the forefront. It's there. >> Okay. I thought I was looking at AI in the as a >> Okay. >> Sorry. >> Thank you, Miss Marin. Okay. So, um I'll just say off the bat I agree with Mr. Fris's uh additions to the program and the spirit of Mr. Dun. It's something I have worked on as well with the sunshine law. So, I'll just put that there first. You know what I'm hearing is is that we need an advocacy toolkit and I will say I I tried to put that together. Um I was hardressed to do it in the last two weeks. Um Dr. Anderson has some great materials. I just sent a link for that to the superintendent. We could talk here. We mentioned
265some of the things we'd like to have like the JARK onepager that I wrote earlier this year and that's updated as of the summer. Um I think the so change is the state accountability. You know if you recall what we did uh last year when we went to the the capital in January we had a one pager about JARK and it had bills on that one pager that were like up to the minute. Hey this is a legislation that's on your desk. And so we were at that point it was very specific. We also could do the same thing for some of those other places. This is that nexus where the superintendent staff need to come together because I I it's just a lot of work and it's not possible to do the legislative research,
266the communications messaging, the design and the specific magisterial or state elected focused research. If we want this to be a big part of our portfolio, then the superintendent needs to help us carve that time out and provide resources for us to do that. Um I I hear the interest, but even talking about the uh accountability and so like we could have a whole conversation just about that to make sure we all understand it and what we'd be seeking and actually develop legislation, but we need time to do that. I also would ask that we receive upcoming town hall dates and I don't know what we're sending to our state delegation. It seems like it's very haphazard. Uh we did talk about sending a regular update to our board of supervisors. I don't not sure where
267that stands. So that's part of this as well and getting savvy on that. Um the active efforts to draft legislation I'm with you. One of the things I wanted to draft actually that I was working with a little bit with uh and I'll finish up is with Senator Salem was legislation that looked at how our schools are being used as polling places given the impact of early voting. Um and maybe that's a Jark study. I don't know. But I've reached out. I haven't gotten anything back. I I don't know if I have to officially say, "Hey, can you draft this bill?" Um, one last thing I'll just mention is does this board want to make a statement or perhaps send send a message to the incoming governor um and send a letter with our priorities
268as the largest delegation as largest school division in the state and also and also uh the reception on Monday. We had planned so hard for this legislative reception. However, our delegation has been called in down to Richmond. all these meetings. We've moved it once, we've moved it twice, and we've got like three officials who are available on Monday, many of some of whom have already been on tours in our schools. So, we among the the two the chair and our other legislative rep, we're suggesting just cancelling it at this point and then being really specific about how to follow up with everyone. Okay. Okay. Just picking up from that. Um I want to be sure that there is um no objection to the cancellation of the November 17th. Again, we'll have very few people available
269because they've been called down to Richmond for various things. Seeing that there are no objections, one of the things that we'd like to do is to ensure that every single member of the Northern Virginia delegation um is covered. Um whether it is a phone call from us or if you could embed that in your school visits if you have one that is coming. Um, so at some point there will be a list that we send and we'll make sure that everybody signs up as to who they'll speak to because we will need to raise our federal and I'm sorry, our state priorities to those individuals. Um, regarding the federal um, representatives um because we're not really funneled in that way. As the federal um, liaison, I will take care of that with their staff. I've
270already had conversations with them um, at the meeting with Senator Salem. So that will be coming to you hopefully by the end of today for you to sign up once we get there. Um the last thing can we move the slide to the next page? >> Yes. >> So the next thing that I wanted to share because this came up in the conversation with Miss Marin and Mr. Mallaloy. What do my visits look like with my legislators? And again it's pretty labor intensive in terms of getting the data. We get these nice little folders that we put together. So them and their aid, they actually walk out with some information about their school about the school and it's very specific and I also leave the same um folder with the with the school principal and
271it has a number of things um which will become available for you minimally for you to look at but it's not you don't have to use it if you don't want to but if you find it helpful you could have your assistant take care of it because Miss Coffee takes care of putting all of this together. We first have a document that is FCPS at a glance where it has much of the data that Dr. Reid has shared with us in multiple places. We just put it together. Then we have kind of uh a list of all of the Mason district schools and I highlight the ones that are specific to that um general assembly members um district. Um, so you'll see like yellow highlights throughout it and then a comparison with all of the
272magisterial districts from number of special education students to population to ML students and title one schools. And then I have a high school review and it has a number of a number of um columns um everything from renovation dates to um to um number of students to again title one status all the demographics again I highlight in this the schools that are germanine to them and I also provide them with another sheet which I don't have here for some reason that tells them the the highest languages spoken outside of English in their schools. And I know that they've used that because um um Congressman Byer, he did use that to kind of change some of his communication after I shared this with him. And the high school page has all 25 high schools as well
273as the middle school page. And then I have the middle school, the elementary school page, which has all of the schools and the regions that I have, which are regions two and six because it's hard to fit 140 schools in one page. Um and then we have the priority lists and that has you know changed based on whatever it is our priorities um accountability and the cut scores the ones that Dr. Reid shared with us during the meeting. I had that as a one-pager for them to to see as well. Um but we also start the conversation with going through some of this this folder in the principal's office before we go out into the schools where I talk about what our concerns are. Um then I ask them what is it that they're doing?
274what are they carrying? And then um then I say, well, could you be able would you be willing to move this forward? I I think the next logical step for me and that is here's the bill that you could actually carry rather than just having the conversation. Um happy to talk about this more with you all if you like if you find any of this helpful, but I have found that the the individuals who come to this visit, they find this data to be very helpful to them and so did Miss Marin and Mr. Malloy. So I will stop there. That's perfect timing. Um now we are going to Miss um Janet Miss. Um yes, if you could please put up the amendments. We are going to take some time to go through those hopefully
275one at a time. If you don't have um questions or high levels of concerns, please um don't speak because we have only until u it's 2:35 now and we only have until 3:00. I feel like we're running against the clock at current. Um so very quickly what I'm going to ask are the um the individuals who first brought them to just read it. Give us a super brief overview if and then we'll take a consensus vote if there are no questions. Mr. FR would you please start with page 16? >> Yes. Um the first two here are additions to um the federal legislative program. So they would be number 49 and 50 beginning on page 19. The first one is regarding SNAP benefits uh which have been in the news a lot lately. Um it
276reads 49. The FC the FEX county school board opposes efforts to undermine Medicaid and the supplemental nutrition assistance program SNAP and supports returning these programs to their full authority and funding levels prior to congressional action in 2025. And then it gives the citation for uh the legislation ensuring they can meet uh children's health care and nutritional needs. Relatedly, number 50 reads, "The Fairfax County School Board opposes efforts to undermine the McKini Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which guarantees educational stability and support for students experiencing homelessness by ensuring their immediate enrollment in school, access to transportation, and the services necessary to remove barriers to their academic success. This is on the chopping block in Washington currently." >> Are there any objections? Being none, um we will if if there are no objections, I will consider that consensus
277for us to move forward with the language as provided. >> All right. >> Please continue. >> Uh the next one is in the state legislative program and it would be an addition under uh adding an ad section other policy issues. Uh and the first item being added under that new section on page 16 would be um the Fairfax County School Board supports efforts to ensure the Virginia Board of Education is committed to serving the interests of all students by strengthening its stability to help provide consistent and collaborative leadership for Virginia's public schools. Uh the one note on that is that there's uh talk among legislators in Richmond uh right now about u making changes to the way that uh members are appointed the the timing of their terms etc. so that we don't have dramatic
278swings like we've experienced in the last year. The second y >> are there any objections? >> All right. Relatedly, uh this would be the second item under that new section. The Fairfax County School Board supports efforts to ensure Virginia's public universities have stable student focused boards of visitors that safeguard institutional reputations and strengthen their ability to provide a premier education uh for all students. Similar to the previous one, I think we all know what's happening at Mason and UVA and elsewhere. >> Are there any objections? >> All right, >> continue. Um and then this is the last one. Uh this is a federal uh legislative uh priority. Uh and this is an amendment to a current priority. Uh previously the agenda indicated our support for something uh which has now been gutted. So uh this
279changes it. Um, page 19, number 36 would now read, "The Fairfax County School Board supports restoring the federal public service loan forgiveness PSLF program." And then adds these other pieces of uh FAFSA that have been gutted, income based repayment, IBR programs, and GRAD plus loans to the way they existed prior to congressional action in 2025 with the legislative citation. These programs help students and educators pay for higher education in the case of PSLF, providing student loan forgiveness in exchange for public education related service time. >> Are there any objections? Thank you. Mr. Dunn, you're up. So, can we please put Mr. Dunn's um amendment up? >> Thank you. Um the uh and Ryan Makavine is the second for my amendment. Uh so the purpose of my amendment is to amend the Virginia FOYA uh act
280to enable uh up to uh six members of our board uh to meet at a time but as applied to all school boards in the state uh instead of the current um uh provision in our state legislative program which calls for all school boards and all other public bodies which is I I don't know what's included in that number. Uh this is uh limited to school boards and uh allows uh anything below a majority of a school board to meet uh in a formal meeting or in what the uh current legislation calls an informal assemblage. The idea is to and the objective is to enable uh especially informal conversations and uh further the effective governance of of our school body which is currently impeded um by the numerical limit in the current legislation which is
281anytime there's a formal meeting or informal assemblage of three or more members that is uh uh requires public notice. >> Thank you. Um can we actually make that a little bit larger? what we have up there. It's hard to see or maybe just take that color out of it. And then well, it was sent and I know Janet had it, but we'll go ahead and ask um for any questions that are of the group. Not sure which came up first, but we'll start with Miss Anderson, then Miss Lady. >> I think that my only I am obviously fully in support of ensuring that more of us can meet at a time. My concern is I definitely um miss When Mr. Dunn says six, I think that that's too many just because I think that we
282we can't have a number. I think what I've always advocated for is a percentage. Um, and if we could go for 40% of our board or 30% of our board, then I think that that still meets the needs for boards that are five um to be at be less than the majority. But for a board that's our size where it's just the sheer volume of people, even if we could get to three people, it would be a lot easier to get through some of our conversations. Um, so I think that for me I am I am um I like the idea of replacing the fixed numerical threshold, but I would advocate for it being a percentage of the board. >> Thank you, Mr. Dunn. After you've heard all of the comments, you'll have an opportunity
283to um give your feedback. Miss Lady, >> yeah, I'm in the same place. I I was going to ask for, you know, 40%, but that might be bold. Um because that certainly would get us to 4.8 but not to five if you do the math. Um but four people is three meetings versus three people which is four meetings. Um I and I just um yeah I I I don't need I don't want to number but a percentage because then it's it's easily applied across all all school boards throughout the state um regardless of the size of their board. >> Thank you Miss um St. John Cunning. Uh that was exactly what I was going to say. maybe do percentages. It is an easier lift for the legislature to say this is what it is and
284it can be applied to all other school boards depending on their numbers. If you have a fixed number, I think that's uh not that's just a heavier lift and not as consistent. >> Thank you. If you have a number fixed number comment, can we just stipulate that it's been assumed? >> Okay, Miss Dixit, >> I agree with my colleagues. The percentage makes sense. Uh but also then we can remove the word majority. >> Okay. >> If >> Thank you. Uh is that Mr. McDaniel or Mr. Moon? Mr. Moon. Mr. D. I appreciate you bringing up uh this amendment. However, six seems to be a quite high. Probably will alarm a lot of legislators to propose this. You know for me you know as a fair county schoolboard member I don't really care about other school
285districts ability to meet or not be able to meet but as far as my board is concerned you know having an opportunity have having an opportunity to be able to have conversation amongst at least four four if that can be allowed I mean that works with a 40% if they can find a legislative proposal for just urban town executive style government's a school board to have up to certain number or certain percentage that's fine I think four would help us quite a lot to be able to do a lot of work much more effectively and efficiently >> thank you Mr. Fresh four. >> I'm not going to talk about numbers. I agree. But I'm not going to talk about numbers. I have two things. One, this is not formatted like an amendment. It doesn't tell
286me where it's going. It doesn't tell me if it's replacing anything. It doesn't tell me if it's adding to. So, that needs to be fixed. If it's adding, then it's all underlined, not just in red. If it's striking, it's struck through. That's the format that uh you know I think we should probably make sure that board members have like a Google doc that shows what samples look like for these kinds of things just generally speaking. Uh secondarily, I believe, and uh Miss Marin can correct me if I'm wrong, uh Delegate Bennett Parker and some others have worked on this issue in the past. Um and perhaps with a larger majority, um among uh people who might be sympathetic, uh maybe we can get that done. I think the number comes into play with whether we
287can get that done. >> Thank you. I'll take a quick turn and I won't talk about the number, but I will say while I'm glad to see that this I and I've known that this has been um in the works at um enrichment for quite a while, but that does not preclude us from having it in our agenda. So, I would be supportive if we can make some of those changes to a percentage rather than a specific number because it makes it less applicable to other places. Um so, Mr. Dunn, your turn for a final word. Oh, so sorry, Miss Moore Mormoheiser. >> Thank you. Um, I I agree. In general, I think it should be 40% or the third, some sort of percentage. That's something I've been saying for years is that it should
288be a percentage of board size. So, it's the same requirement regardless of board size. So, I agree with percentage. Um, I do think if we're going to advocate for this, I've had several conversations over the years with different delegates about the challenges. And I think there's some room for educating the delegates in all of the ways this impacts us. When I've had that conversation, they're shocked that we can't all jointly edit a Google doc, even though it's foyable anyway. So, why we can't jointly edit something that's foyable makes zero sense to me. In the same way, why we can't reply all because that's also foyable. So if something is foyable, why? And I'd maybe ask if our legal team could take another look at that because if it's subject to FOYA, why can't we reply
289all? And if it's not subject to FOYA, it's a close session type of thing, which we also have those available in meetings. So I don't quite understand some of those challenges. But the thing that spoke greatest to this to the legislation when I've talked to them is the impact it has on their constituents being able to lift up issues to us. So I recently had a delegate who had a constituent who wanted to talk to the board about a specific issue and that delegate had to set up six meetings with that constituent so that constituent could talk to us about their issue. We weren't taking any action. We weren't making any promises per se. We were just listening to the constituent's concerns. But because they didn't really want to do it in an open meeting,
290the constituent has that right to not have everything they say in the public. the constituent was not able to come speak to the whole board or 40% of the board just to say these are my concerns and this is what I'm looking for. Instead, that constituent had to do six individual meetings two at a time just to be able to say to us this is what I'm looking for. And that I think impedes constituent services significantly. It impedes us ability to listen to the community. It impedes our delegation's ability to bring their constituent needs that are school related to schoolboard members. So I do think that talking and when I've talked about how we can't reply all we can't work on a Google doc jointly at the same time we can't well we can't reply
291to their each other's comments on a Google doc we can they were shocked so I think in some of the way we talk about this we need to talk about the fact that this rule doesn't take into account the electronic way we do business that is foyable I can't say that enough it is foyable so why can't we do it if it's still available to the public. That seems to me meet the sunshine law. But regardless, I think educating our delegation is helpful because and in conjunction with that to say how much more the work of the school board has gotten to be even in the six years I've been on here, the amount of constituent services, the amount of um requirements from the community, I think that's important to lift up as well. So
292efficiency and transparency is absolutely both important but I don't know if the rules have kept up with the changes in the way things work. >> Thank you. That's very helpful. Uh Mr. Dunn >> uh I I I would just like to echo everything that uh my colleague Miss Seismore said. I think educating the state legislators legislators about everything uh that the all the negative impacts from the current legislation is very important especially to ensure effective governance. Um you know there's obviously a majority of people who favor 40%. Uh so I defer to the majority. Um I just want to point out however that um uh two things. one, uh, I mentioned six, but my email, uh, did not mention six. Um, my my proposal, um, as to respond to Mr. Fish's comment actually said, "This
293is what the state legislative program currently says, and this is what I'm proposing to replace," which is a wholesale replacement of the current language. Um, so I I didn't paste this language into the document that's um on the shared screen right now. Um but you can look at my email for for what the current um legislative program says. Uh 40% for the vast majority of school boards in the state uh would not um enable more people um to to meet together. Uh for example, Arlington has a five member school board. Uh I believe city of Fairfax does as well. Um if I'm correct in that uh 40% of five is two people. So Arlington would still be subject to only two people meeting at a time. Um that that certainly, you know, I I represent
294Fairfax, not Arlington. So uh I'm fine with 40%. Um but it helps uh Fairfax and anyone who has more than five schoolboard members. I just don't have an inventory of how many other schoolboard members in the state have uh more than five. I know the majority, I believe, is three, especially in the rural parts of the of the state. Um and uh and and so I'm I'm happy to to take that friendly amendment from, you know, whoever first proposed 40% uh instead of uh the the word majority, but I appreciate uh the support of my colleagues otherwise. >> Thank you. So given that we're not necessarily giving consensus to your amendment, you will have to present this when this comes up for a vote and we'll talk about formatting to ensure um uniformity. Um folks,
295we have two more things on which we need to give consensus. So, we're going to not necessarily take um go backs on this issue at current. Um can we please have the federal priorities be posted? >> While that happens, um you know, as the conversation um evolves, we've talked about um well, Miss Maron just talked about sending a letter to the new state um leadership. um can we have consensus as to whether or not the board would be amanable to doing so? Like do we want to do that at all? And then of course we'll come together and determine what the content will be at some point in the future. We have time. Um so all in favor of No, we can't vote because otherwise it is it is uh I need a second. Are
296there any objections to the board sending a letter to the new governor just outlining some of our priorities? And this letter will be shared with everyone before it is sent obviously. Okay. Seeing um we could send it to the whole world but we'll set certainly send it to the new governor. Um and I don't see any objections. So we will need to talk about as to um working with Mr. Malloy to help draft such a letter just really to couch very meaningfully not just our positions but the impacts the rationale behind those positions but in a way that does not create a 10-page document because that will be hard to absorb. Okay. Now we have up there the federal priorities which have been listed. Um we will need to have consensus on this because this
297will be what is shared with legislators. Well, I guess not on the 17th anymore, but on an individual basis um with the legislators. Are there any objections to the federal priorities as listed? Seeing none, we will consider them. We will consider that we have consensus to move forward, Mr. Mallaloy, to clean it up. And so, we have something that we can share very quickly. Can we also post the state priorities? of what you have there. Well, everyone has estate priorities on board docks and probably has had an opportunity to study them. Are there any objections to moving forward as they are listed, >> Dr. Anderson? This would include the amendments that were done without objection. Right. >> The priorities do not necessarily include the amendments. The program includes the amendments. Priorities are the hot topic
298things. So, two different conversations at current. So the state priorities as listed, are there any objections? Seeing none, Mr. Mallaloy, you can go ahead and wrap that up for us so that we can present that in our individual conversations. Um just kind of next steps moving forward. Um we are not going to have the November 17th briefing. We are engaging in individual discussions with um legislators. We are going to have a signup sheet to ensure that every legislator has a board member speaking to them. Could we have more than one? Sure. If you can get the audience, yay. But minimally, everyone needs to have one. Um, and I don't have a timetable, but I I would like to think hopefully we can do it around maybe before VSBA because we had intended on having this
299discussion with them on the 17th, but um somewhere around there. So let's not wait until December in order to have that conversation. I think makes sense. Um we have our federal pro our federal priorities, our state priorities. Our joint priorities is yet to come. Mr. Mallaloy, >> the joint the joint priorities are included in this in as part of the the >> Okay. Do we need to take um to give consensus on that at current? I >> I would suggest that you do. >> Okay. So let's go ahead and put that up, please. Oh, is this up? I can't barely see like what's what. Um, are there any objections to the joint priorities? Seeing none, we'll continue. We'll consider those concurred by the board. Um, the last business that we have not really honed in
300on in terms of next steps is regarding the formulation of bills and budget amendments. I know that there's some interest but we haven't really made a board decision regarding how to move forward on that. So my once I find the sheet um going through I think it was on slide Mr. Mallaloy which slide had the areas of interest by this board for potential bills and amendments. >> Slide 20. Thank you. So, if we could put up slide 20. So, the bottom four are being taken care of by other legislators as we've learned. So, we have one, two, three. Um, Mr. Mallaloya, I would love to hear your guidance regarding the first one. So, timing and administration reforms. What information do you know that could serve us? Otherwise, we'll be looking to perhaps offering some sort
301of amendment or a bill. Can you give some guidance as to where this may be with others? >> So, I think there have been some discussions already with delegation members about this topic. I know that um some information was shared in a Friday letter um in terms of some potential changes and some data around the impact that those changes had. So, I think that those conversations are ongoing, but I can't I I haven't been directly involved in in the conversations, but um but I know it's it's certainly something that VSBA or VAS has included it in their legislative priorities. You know, making some some adjustments. Um other organizations are doing the same, other school divisions are doing the same. Um, so I mean I think that's it. There there there's ongoing work on that, but
302>> so I guess I'm going to tackle it in a different way. Since we have these three items that I know we've talked about ad nauseium, are there any continued interests on the part of board members to submit well to have Mr. Mallaloy support us in writing bills to present to a um state legislator? Miss Heismoiser. Oh, okay. I wasn't sure which one went up. >> I mean, I would say very much yes. I think whether it's to present bills that are in the affirmative of things we want done, although I think more I think presenting I guess I'd be more interested in presenting changes or fixes to bills that are currently out there. One of the worries I have about presenting bills is I think it takes a lot more conversation and stuff to
303present affirmative bills than it does to present fixes. But I think that's something that we can talk about and see how that would look a little bit more and see how that fits into the way their work style is to make sure we're not unintentionally presenting things that then fall into pitfalls or things like that. But I definitely think there's space to present fixes to bills or changes to bills to make them better. And I would highly highly advocate for that because otherwise and I've heard this from many of our delegation like this is great to have this list of things you want but we don't give us ways that we can then take what you want and submit it right even if it's not a full bill if it's enough that they can then
304submit it to their bill writers. But I think we need to give them more than this and I'd be highly in favor of that. Thank you for that. Being that we only have one minute left to this session, I don't think we'll be able to hash out the topics on which we want to submit fixes um to present to um any legislator or to make decisions about these three topics that are here. So perhaps Miss Marin and I and Mr. Mallaloy can reconvene in terms of the next step to move forward regarding the submission of bills and budget amendments. Miss Marin? >> Yeah. I just say, you know, VSBA is coming up like next week and so for those going, it would be good to have language ready or ideas ready to connect with others
305downstate. Um, like I said, you know, I've been hardressed to move this further in the last two weeks. So, it's going to take more than just myself and Ricky. If people want to develop bill language, like, please reach out. Perhaps start with a draft and send it to us, articulate it, because it just it's it's a lot going on right now. So, thanks Barring any additional comments, this part of the work session is now concluded. Perhaps we can have a five minute stretch break so we can um move a little bit. So we will come back at three you did you say did Mr. McDaniel would you like to sit over here? All right team let's go ahead and get started. Um it is almost 3:15 and we've got our last topic of the work
306session which is to go over the the status and the information around the comprehensive school boundary review. And so with that I will turn over to Dr. Reed to introduce the topic and we'll go from there. >> Thank you Miss Seismoreheiser and um what a day. [laughter] So anyhow I uh will be happy to introduce our team. they're going to present um bits and pieces of this um and I'll be sharing some of this work with them, but um we're going to do an update of where we are in the divisionwide boundary review process and then we're going to talk just a little bit about the Western High School as well. So, I'm going to turn it over right now to Mr. Eric Gordon, our chief facilities um officer. So, Mr. Gordon, actually Mr. Dr.
307Gordon is joined by Mr. Muick, Dr. King, Miss Young Blood Hall, and Mr. Smith um in this because really there's a whole ginormous team effort. Dr. Pon as well has been at a lot of the meetings. Mr. Lambert's been at a lot of the meetings. Um it's been uh a lift really from a lot of folks um at the senior leadership level. And Dr. King's part of the advisory committee as is Mr. Gordon um and Miss Hall has been there and Mr. Smith. So anyhow, Mr. Gordon, why don't you kick us off on a couple of slides and uh we can phone a friend as we do this because it's been a team effort. >> Yes, ma'am. Hey, good afternoon all. Eric Gordon, chief of facilities. Today, I'll be we'll presenting an update on the
308ongoing comprehensive school boundary review. So to recap uh how this process got started in July of 2024 the school board approved and updated policy 8130 on boundaries uh mandate mandating that FCPS school boundaries be reviewed every five years. Uh previously we had not done a comprehensive review in the last 40 years. So in July of 2025 uh so this this summer the school board adopted revised language which set phasing plan for boundary adjustments at all school levels. This slide depicts uh the four primary um criteria that's given to us from 8130. School board identified these four criterias that should be prioritized by the superintendent uh in the boundary review. So access to programming uh proximity enrollment capacity and transportation. 8130 contains seven additional criteria that states each school community and unique location. uh the superintendent
309may consider additional criteria and there are seven of those that are listed within uh 8130. A few points to keep us uh grounded is the importance of uh this work is some of the reminders that we have provided to the community during the process. Uh first of all is adjusting school boundaries is a national best practice that is used in school systems across uh the country to manage resources. This is one tool that to manage resources and addresses changes that may arise. Uh secondary, this is a uh budgetary adjustments that all boundary adjustments may occur as part of a boundary review are not intended to be quick fixes for all challenges across the division. Uh thirdly, the review cycles that were established in 8130 allow for regular reviews to address changes that may arise in
310the future and as mentioned this tool is not a one-stop problem solver. Additionally, as part of the review, uh normalizing the conversation around the boundaries has been key part of this process. So the slide here you see is uh the timeline. So the phases that we have gone through. Um phase one was a boundary review process for the fall and spring uh fall of 2024 and spring of 2020 2025 held community meetings in uh community meetings and received input. Uh we're currently in phase two and we just completed uh community meetings of scenario 4. So we met 12 times in September and 12 times in October um as you're probably aware. So looking ahead, we're beginning work on the final scenario development, which will continue through November, ending early 2026 with the superintendent's recommendation to
311the school board for action, which uh this slide here depicts the uh uh the process that we've been through. So basically kind of a just a different look from the previous slide on the timeline. Um these these are really uh significant effort uh touch points with the community. Uh the first meetings were in fall of 2024 were to explain the process and collect insights and feedback from the community. Uh this data was used by the consultant to develop three scenarios for consideration by the superintendent's boundary advisory committee and the community. These scenarios focused on high impact areas uh as a review. Scenario one looked at neighborhood connectivity. Scenario two focused on cohort continuity and scenario three looked at a comprehens comprehensive balance which was a combination of scenarios one and two. These scenarios were accumulative
312meaning uh the changes from one were included in two and three included all scenarios uh all changes in three were part of uh included input from one and two. In spring of 2025, these scenarios were released to the public to uh to gather input from the community and public uh meetings. Feedback was collected through the boundary explorer tool tool and this uh this feedback was then reviewed by the consultant and the superintendent's advisory committee. Members of the committee reviewed the feedback and policy uh criteria foreign priorities and were then shared with the consultant to be used in development of scenario 4. uh utilizing the feedback and priorities uh from the committee members. Scenario 4 was then released and presented to the public. Scenario 4 is the only scenario under consideration and we're still receiving comments
313on that until on about uh the 14th of November. So this week is when the window will close for boundary explore uh comment period. Um looking at the next slide. So just some quick data from uh the committee meetings that we held. There have been there were a total of 24 meetings held. had roughly 2500 people in attendance. You'll see um a breakdown of persons intended attended in person versus attended virtually. Looking at community feedback, uh community feedback is currently being accepted as I mentioned through the boundary explorer tool through November 14th. Data was pulled as of November 2nd, 2025 in preparation in prep in preparing for this presentation. The boundary tool has received roughly 8,300 comments and that was as of nove November 2nd and received more than 2,000 less talks messages. The superintendent's
314boundary review advisory committee consists of 95 members. This includes two parents, caregivers from each of the high school pyramids, of the 24 high school pyramids, and school-based division level administrators, teachers, operational staff, representatives from the county and local uh organizations and associations and other committee members. The committee helps to ensure the community feedback is considered in [clears throat] developmental and development of potential boundary scenarios and provides recommendations to the superintendent. looking at a recap of the advisory committee uh work today. Um the committee has held 13 meetings since December of 2024. During [snorts] the summer uh the community uh committee received community feedback on draft scenarios shared with the community in the spring of 2025 and developed a list of key priorities. In September, the community provided boundary change priorities and reviewed academic programming and
315initial uh transportation proximity analysis for the from the consultant. Input from the committee members plays uh an important role in shaping and guiding uh consultant work in this process. In upcoming November meetings, the advisory committee will review community feedback and we continue to provide input uh to further revise scenario 4 and provide additional recommendations or information to the superintendent. So we'll see here is what's next. Um so we have advisory committee meeting tonight and do you want to provide more update on that ma'am or you want me to keep going? >> You can keep going. >> All right. So uh new kind of a slight adjustment. >> I'll talk about the adjustment. I thought you were just [clears throat] going to keep going with the slides. >> Yeah. >> So the adjustment is uh through
316does not have their analysis completed from the October meetings. So, we're going to facilitate the meeting this evening and talk about uh what people what committee members have heard. Um uh give them an opportunity to look at the maps again with feedback because many of the advisory committee members attended the community meetings. Um and we've got a first draft or a first round of comments that folks will be able to look at that were received prior to October 28th. And so they'll have they're getting the first trunch of uh boundary tool comments this evening um actually this afternoon and we'll be reviewing that first trunch this evening. Um so then we're going to have our meeting on the 24th and we're adding a meeting I believe likely December 2nd. They're firming that up. So the
31711th and 12th that you see up there will move to the 24th and December 2nd. Um whereas uh tonight's meeting will have uh slightly different con uh content because we won't have all the um feedback uh reviewed because it's still open through the 14th and today's only the 12th among other things. So thank you. I think that slide's done, Eric. >> Yes, ma'am. Hey, thank you. And so that still leads us into uh keeps us keeps us on track in time for a December time frame where Dr. read superintendent will look through to make her recommendation and then will lead us to into January time frame for where uh recommendation is presented to the school board have a public hearing and then the school board will make a decision on the path forward and that's
318what we have for a boundary update. Then we have a few slides for the Western High School update. Um on this timeline you will see um kind of this lays out key uh points and I'll just run across from left to right uh November 13th time frame new Western High School programming vote uh December 18th. >> I'm sorry to interrupt. I was thinking I apologize that we could split the two topics and take comments on the boundary part first and then go to the Western High School part. So I apologize. So if you don't mind, we'll pause and just take comments on the boundary process and then we'll go to this part. So it's 3:30 almost. We have about two hours. So we'll take questions for maybe the next hour and then we can split
319to the second part of the presentation. So um we'll start with Carl's not here so we'll go with Dr. Anderson. >> If you can move the slides back to the previous ones that'd be great. >> Um thank you. I guess one of my questions is you shared with me the resolution to perhaps Glasgow and and Park Lawn. I I've made no bones about those two things not being part of the initial scenarios of being great concern to me. Um how do I treat this information at current? Like where does that show up? It's it I I'm not sure how to deposit it in terms of scenarios that were already developed. So my understanding is the team uh that through did come through on this topic finally um and did provide I believe you directly Dr.
320Anderson visa v Eric um in the last couple days I don't recall which day um the uh park glasgow adjustments for your review it'll be included in the Friday letter it will be integrated into these conversations and in some ways having the meetings moved into December our last meeting December 2nd give us a little more time as the boundary advisory committee to review those very specific park lawn and glas adjustments because the those should be rolled into this divisionwide No question. >> And so this evening that you're having tonight, this um this will not be part of that conversation. >> It can be. It's whether or not you want to give your feedback before it becomes part of the conversation or after. So if you're fine with us putting it in front of the your
321Mason District folks tonight, happy to do that. I think we were trying to give you the courtesy to look at it first. Okay. [laughter] All right. >> Okay. Thank you. And I'll try to do that so you have it as soon as possible. Thank you. That was my main question. Um so the other question that I had because I think this is really for the um community because that has come up several times. Um there seems to be some misunderstanding regarding the scenarios. Scenarios supersede each other. They're not different pieces to be pulled from each. So scenario one is done and gone. Scenario two is done and gone. Scenario three is done. and scenario four is the only one that we're having discussions about. Can you confirm? >> Yes, ma'am. That is correct. >> Okay.
322Thank you. Um also reading this timeline regarding recommendations um that the superintendent is going to be providing to us. Well, B is giving you recommendations, then you're going to provide your recommendations. Um the B is not a decision-making body. They're just giving you their best thinking. Is there a scenario? Oh, I hate to use that word, but is there a circumstance under which the recommendations that are being provided to you by the BRAAC um are not what you bring forward to us or perhaps you might pull back into a previous scenario and bring that to or parts of a previous scenario to bring that to the board for our decision- making in December, January. I think you were correct that scenario four is the only scenario at play at the moment. The B will provide
323their feedback and we'll construct a scenario five for lack of a better nomenclature here. I will look at that. I would expect to make very little revision to that, but it's very possible I will make some adjustment to that um and make a scenario six that I bring to you. I can't um and that'll likely be as a result of some feedback or some anomaly I look at with transportation or trailer placement or something maybe. I I mean I can't envision what the something is, but um it's possible that I still will make some adjustment after B gives it to me. >> Thank you. Um this will be our last conversation about this until we get those recommendations from you. Correct. I believe it's the last scheduled work session, but I I don't know. There
324still may be spaces on work sessions, so there may be other opportunities to have that conversation. >> So, here are my questions regarding what to expect from you. Will it be inclusive of transportation? Will it be inclusive of the your goal to include grade six at middle schools? Would it also include whether or not the entire scenario [clears throat] will be implemented all at the same time or it will be implemented in phases? Can you give a little bit of an insight as to what we could look toward having from you outside of these other changes? >> Well, the board is going to make the transportation decision around phasing. you will have a date set for that already in terms of whether you're going to provide that for the motion that you previously passed. So
325that's a board decision that's already calendared I believe for December 18th. So I won't be bringing a separate recommendation from that. Um, with regard to sixth grade, I don't believe we have found that that's going to be a likely I mean, I'll certainly speak to it, but I don't think we've been able to make movement on that topic at this time. >> I thought you had one site that seemed um >> We thought we might. We thought we might, but um I have not gotten the numbers back yet on whether that's actually possible. And then the to be honest the request to come back and march with an AAP center um stay at every middle school may impact all those numbers. So I need to kind of deal with one variable at a time I
326think with that topic. So it's there might be one but I it's unlikely that I'm going to speak to sixth grade in the middle school beyond one school and I'm not sure we'll be able to there. Um what was I'm sorry what was the other question? it was implementation. Would it be wholesale? We're doing every area throughout the division or >> Yes, I will be able to provide feedback on that. Yes, ma'am. >> Thank you. I think that's it for me right now. >> Thank you very much. Um, next I'm sorry. I can actually say today more specifically, we absolutely are going to be providing we're absolutely going to be providing some stepping into this in the western high school pyramids um for sure, right? Like I can already say that because we're um very
327likely depending on how the conversation goes today going to be extending that conversation to be thoughtful around that work. So yes, I'll be speaking to that. >> Thank you. Is today the last meeting of the BRAAC? >> No, ma'am. They're not. Tonight is one of the last three. There'll be a meeting tonight, the 24th, and December or early December. >> Thank you, Miss Marin, followed by Mr. Dunn. >> Okay. I'd first like to share a few thoughts with my colleagues. This is difficult work. I remain very proud that this board is facing it fullon um and engaging in the conversations in our community and I am interested in getting to yes to obtain a unified decision of the board on some boundary changes. I am open to receiving input from each member especially each magisterial
328member about how proposed changes will turn out in reality um including the cost and benefit of those changes so to speak. I'm trying to understand all the proposed changes and I'll be sending out a list of times that I'm available in hopes that one of those times will work for each of you to please connect so we can um learn from each other. I want to let you know that I am reliable for making decisions based on data about capacity and also the street data about how changes play out in reality. Um what seems to make sense on a map may not actually make sense in a neighborhood depending on where the foot traffic and actual traffic goes. Um, I also ask my colleagues to consider any motions I may bring to adjust scenarios in
329the Hunter Mill District with the same goal of getting to yes and trusting me as I advocate for my community and I will in turn do the same. So, I have two uh focuses of of comments and questions. Um, Dr. Reid, I'm not clear what I do with information I have from the community such as when we talked about foot traffic. I just mentioned in traffic right on the map right now there are some suggestions or proposals in scenario four that split a community and basically cut it off from the only entry out of its you know if you could consider a culde-sac but bigger right that it looks like on a map they could be with school community B but really the geography and the the driving make them it makes sense to be
330in B where do I advocate for that are you going to take that input from schoolboard members because there has not been an official avenue for that. It's come from the boundary review advisory committee. And I I do continue to wonder about, you know, if the boundary committee advisory committee is getting the same comments again and again and again, well, how is that being weighted if it's the same exact thing? So, how do I advocate for my residents? Is that going to inform scenario five or is that something that has to come up as a motion on the day of the vote? I mean, I think it could be both, right? I think if you forward any feedback that you have, other board members have forwarded feedback to me to share with staff. I'm happy
331to receive that feedback um and share it also with the advisory committee. I think that um after the advisory committee makes their scenario five, we're going to post that and before we certainly can connect before I bring scenario six. And if you still don't see those um your feedback reflected in that, then absolutely that's something the board has the final say on. So um you can certainly modify whatever recommendation comes to you in January. >> When can we expect scenario five? um following the early December meeting, the last advisory committee meeting which we had to schedule um in December. >> What's that date about? >> It's the probably the first week in December hopefully, but again, we're hoping that after that feedback, it takes through a couple days to get there. Um you know, stuff
332uploaded. So, we've had to, you know, it'll probably be end of first week, maybe second week early. >> Okay. What I'm hearing you say is that there is no formal process for schoolboard members to provide input. I I thought there was a hard line between us being involved and now you've mentioned you've gotten feedback from members. I haven't given you any feedback. Um it's starting to really in terms of specific boundaries and changes. I will say at um a large community meeting I held uh last week with about a hundred people, a member of the Brack stood up and said I don't really know much more than you do. So that has been sort of the power of the conversation. So um I I want to feel like I have more of a voice than
333just kind of the average person, but in and I want to give you this feedback as soon as possible because I don't want to leave my community hanging until the last minute. >> Well, then I would email it to me if you have it. >> This is new information. I'm glad to know that that's the process. Thank you. I sure will. Next we have Mr. Dunn followed by Mr. Anderson and then Mr. >> Thank you. Uh can you hear me? Okay. Okay. I'm assuming you guys can hear me. Um >> yes. >> So, okay, great. Uh thank you. Uh so I just wanted to start um this process has been uh a work in progress. I think uh there's a lot of lessons that need to be learned and captured in an afteraction report and
334I hope that that is part of the plan. Is that part of the plan Dr. Reid? >> It absolutely is. Anytime we take on divisionwide work, the team absolutely does afteraction planning. And I think in this case since it's been 40 years and no playbook um it would be most appropriate to have an afteraction plan. >> Thank you. Um I I think uh perhaps the greatest mistake during this process was the the consultant that we hired. Um uh yeah, I know that was uh recommended um u by uh FCPS leadership, but ultimately I believe the the consultant proved um incapable um of performing the most basic uh tasks. Um, at no point, including the most recent round of community meetings, have I ever felt that the consultant um actually understands um the schools, the neighborhoods
335um in in our county, in my part of the county at least. Um and uh and I continue to have, you know, new issues that arise as a result of um some of the changes that are contained in in the uh in scenario 4. But I also just want to express uh extreme disappointment that um trailers and modulars really were not um not just prioritized but were really not addressed um at all in any significant way. Um there are schools with uh that are at 153% without modulars and um and so that um situation is now going to uh continue for another 5 years um unless uh schoolboard members affirmatively step up to advocate for those communities uh where principles are fully expecting uh their their overcrowding to be addressed. And I I don't think
336that was the process as it was envisioned, but it is the process that as it is. Um and the uh the students who are most affected by these trailers and modulars are low-income students. So I feel that it is completely unfair and and uh and quite possibly discriminatory to um to allow this situation which has already persisted for decades and in many cases um to to continue indefinitely into the future without any remediation or any reduction in in trailers and modulars. uh because I believe strongly for student safety, for environmental health, for many reasons that students should be learning in school buildings, not in trailers and uh regardless whether there's plumbing in the trailers or not. Um and and you know, that will be my advocacy going forward um for for my district. Um and
337I encourage uh all of my me all of my colleagues to look at trailers and modulars and in in your districts as well if that's of interest. Um, I just wanted to provide those comments um on the school boundary process, but I also just wanted to say I hope going forward that as part of the afteraction that we look at community meetings and making sure that we engage um the community in a meaningful way. I believe that the community meetings in September were not meaningful or effective. Um and and it does create a certain cynicism among the public uh when they believe that the the results are kind of pre-cooked. >> Thank you, Mr. D. That was your time. Thank you. Do you want to go back, Mr. Dunn? >> Uh no, thank you. >>
338Okay. Thank you, Miss Anderson. >> I want to start off by saying that I appreciate everybody's work here. Um, I appreciate the B members that have been thoughtful in their in their analysis of what's been going on. I appreciate all the people that have emailed us. I appreciate the lion share of the work that's been taken on on our staff watching you guys orchestrate the meetings and all of the event work that was done. I am deeply impressed with what we were able to pull off in a very short period of time and I fully understand that this is the board's request. Okay. Um, I can't I love the fact that we acknowledge it's one of the first places that I've actually seen it written down. This is not supposed to fix every problem that
339we've got. We dug this hole for 40 years and we we did this over time and this intent this was intended to set us on the path that we can dig out of the hole that we're in. It is not necessarily going to fix everything the first go around. That was not the intention. If I understand correctly, we're at what roughly 2% of kids. Is that correct? Right around there. So, we're about 2% of student population that our adjustments, which is which means that what we've been saying all along, most of our kids go to the right schools. This is fixing small issues that are around the edges in order to fix fix the capacity that we've got across the county. Um, I am while I understand that all of us know our districts the
340best and I don't know exactly how that's going to look in terms of how this is all going to shake out at the end. But what I can say is that I am concerned about last minute advocacy here because only hearing from the loudest voices a major again we had 2500 people show up at the meetings. Many of them were the same people from meeting to meeting to meeting and we haveund let's just call it 180,000 students tip not not every household has two parents or two guardians but many do and so it is not representative of the way that everyone across the the division and I also understand that the folks that show up at our meetings are sometimes the folks that have the time and space to be able to show up at
341our meetings. Okay. uh not to diminish the importance of of hearing their voices too. We have certain schools that I mean I will use West Springfield as an example. It is the tightest boundary of any high school that we have. It's exactly what we want a boundary to look like and we have too many kids that go to that school and there's not much that we're going to be able to do that's going to fix the problem. And if I am a board member that's going to advocate for something, it's going to impact other people's schools at the same time. and we have to think about that as we're moving forward. So, I just want to make sure that we trust the process moving through. This is new in the process in terms of this
342is a new adventure for the division um the way that we're doing it. And I do believe that we've worked hard to get here and I want us to see it through to to get to the result so that we can start looking towards the next step towards digging out of the hole. So that was very well timed, Miss Anderson. Um, Miss St. John Cunning and then Miss Lady. >> Um, first of all, I I will echo what Miss Anderson just said. Interestingly enough, I had an interview yesterday with a boy scout who called me to talk about boundaries and I wanted to explain the process to him and I want to make very clear that this board specifically said we are directing the superintendent to take this work on. We said that because we
343understand that each of us have different needs in our magisterial districts and if we were going to do this work it would become well if you do that in your district it impacts this district and we said this has got to be a holistic fair approach and a committee was appointed the B committee who has been very thoughtful I want to thank everyone that has done this work this is ymen's work and I really want to people that aren't here that have been at every community meeting I want to shout out to Grace, Angie, and Rahil that have been at every single meeting at night and have spent 90 hours out of their week being there to support our community. The opportunities have been there. I agree that yes, there are specific things that we
344know in our districts, but we specifically and very intentionally made this decision. And that's what I explained to this boy scout and I like I told him, you know, I understand how this must look like to you. and he came away from this interview very appreciative because he didn't know that it had not been 40 years. He he also understood why we delegated this to the superintendent so that it would be holistic and we wouldn't be having turf fights and I appreciate the work that has gone on and that has been done. I don't appreciate some of the work that some of our schoolboard members have done where they have gone specifically to people and said if can I offer you a deal when we've never had that authority to do that and that to
345me has muddied the waters and I'm really disappointed that some of the people on this board have done that because it has directly impacted a lot of us. Um and I think we've got to own up to that and people have got to be accountable for them going to specific communities saying I can make a deal with you. That was not supposed to happen. anytime I got any information, I directly emailed it to this to the superintendent from any community member because that's what we agreed on. And now we're going back and saying we didn't know what our rule was. We were very intentional about this work. This is hard work. It's not it's not easy. There's there's going to be people that aren't going to be happy, but at the end of the day,
346we have to do what's right for the entire division, not just what's right for Franconia, not just what's right for Springfield, not just what's right for Hunter Mill. It has to be the best work for the entire division. >> Thank you, Miss St. John Coney. I appreciate it. Um, any comments before I go to Miss Lady? >> Miss Lady, then Mr. Moon. Uh I'm going to echo some of my colleagues and thanking staff. Um it and and especially Grace, Angie, and Rael. I mean, it's amazing and and all of you uh the time you haven't seen your families, I think things since school started um because all the nights out. So, um I see you and I appreciate that. Um and al also the Brack members. I know I'm blessed with some fantastic Brack members
347who are crunching data uh and doing things via you know algorithms that I don't comprehend or understand but have been informative to me to better understand this process. Um, but I also want to talk about the fact that, you know, this should come as no surprise, friends. We can't please everybody. And I can tell you in my tenure working in public school, the leaders who bothered me the most were the ones who wouldn't make a decision because they were afraid of the people they wouldn't be pleasing. So, they became sort of like, you know, they just didn't make decisions. Okay, we've got a decision to make and we're not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And I I do not want to sit there and make sausage, tofu, whatever you want to
348call it at the table and try to amend and amend and amend whatever the superintendent brings forward to us. There have been several scenarios. There's been lots of feedback. I will say this to echo some of what's been said. I I can't even really call these cons I I I have never talked to the consultants. That was never my way of working around this. it was to forward things to the superintendent and to my BA committee members and that's what I've been doing and so anything that I have that needs to be shared I've been sharing it and encouraging my my constituents to put it uh where in uh into the tool. Um so you know at the end of the day um you know I I I am very proud of the work that's
349been done in a short amount of time and and realize that you know we started out with a priority from all the parents from our community members of split feeders. Let's deal with split feeders. Let's deal with capacity. Well, as soon as we dealt with split feeders and capacity, guess what? Oh, but not when it means my child or my nostalgic love affair with, you know, my neighborhood school or the fact that I'm fifth generation that's going to go to this high school. All of our schools are good. We can clearly look at maps and see where there are issues, but when we fix them, a lot of people came out of the woodwork. And so, they really don't want to to resolve split feeders. Um, I mean, my point in this is that as
350soon as there's a pain point for anybody, they're gonna respond to it, but you can't do work with fidelity if there aren't pain points. And the last thing I'm going to say is if you really are going to exercise your fidiciary responsibility, and I might be going, you know, a little too far here, but I'm gonna just put it out there. When it comes to phasing and busing, when it comes to do doing this work, you can't believe in healthy start times if you're gonna bust all the phasing. It's my opinion. You can't believe in being fiscally responsible if you're going to bust all the phasing because of what it's going to cost and because it's also going to impact what's happening with the populations. I'm seeing it at Kent Gardens with the change and
351and phasing in rising second through sixth graders. I I love my predecessor. The previous board I think that was a that was not that was not an appropriate amount of phasing but and maybe I'll take a go back. Thanks. >> Thank you Mr. Mr. Moon then Mr. Fr. >> Oh thank you. Um, I was just surprised to hear a comment from a a colleague that some board members were making deals with the communities and that surprised me. If that were the case uh truly the case, then I'm disappointed. But at the same time, I'm hoping that if and if any of the board members were making having conversation with the community members, they were trying to hear get feedback, their comments, their concerns. Uh that's where my hope is. Uh so with that with with
352a with that comment being shared with you I have a couple of questions for staff or superintendent. Did I hear correctly? The phasing the transportation decisions is scheduled to be made in December 18th. December 18th and [snorts] we don't actually vote on the final boundary until January sometime because we do not get the recommendations from superintendent until after the our decision to be made on transportation. You know I have all along assumed that our decision our vote on the transportations will come down upon budgetary implications whether it's going to cost money and if so how much that's going to cost and that has been my assumption and without knowing what the boundaries will be like I don't know how I can I can make a determination as to whether it's appropriate level of additional resources
353we have to put in we need to put in to provide the transportation. So that's for superintendent. >> Yes sir. So as you know I'll be writing the superintendent's budget in December. Um, and often I have that data um, and have a draft of it written with staff just prior to winter break. Then I'll take it I'll work it through winter break and make sure I'm at peace with it. Um, so if we're not if you're going to choose to fund transportation in alignment with the motion that was most recently made, which said fifth and sixth grade at any elementary school, middle school for all middle schools, and high school for all high schools, we're talking about funding transportation at 200 schools and whether or not that's going to be something I would need to
354include in budget is a pretty important piece for me to include as I prepare the superintendent's budget. So, I think we felt like it was important to have that vote prior to me presenting a budget because traditionally we've provided transportation for phasing when we've adjusted boundaries at one, two, maybe three schools at a time. I don't think we've ever contemplated transportation at 200 schools at the same time. So I think the it's a question I think we could give you a range before that vote of the likely costs and I don't love speculating but based on by the 18th we'll have a scenario five right so we would be able to say all of x number of schools would be impacted and if children in those schools we could give a range I think of
355a possible budget implication and I think than the board's determination is do we see that as a priority to fund in a budget year such as this I think is the question. >> I mean I I appreciate the fact that you're going to have to work on your budget proposer >> uh to be submitted to the school board and you will want to know where the board stands on this you know this important piece. >> Yes sir. >> Uh that has budgetary implication but at the same time >> at the same time that's I mean we I at least as one board member that is a important piece of information before and I'm also at the same time I'm also hearing hearing that even though this is comprehensive 200 school etc. Uh it sounds as
356if that as of this point it may only affect 2% of the students. It might be it might be 3% two to three, but it's but it could affect potentially two kids at 160 schools or >> 16 kids at two schools. >> Dr. I just want you to know at this point without at least you letting us know what the range of a budgetary implication that may be. It will be really difficult for me to cast my vote on any motion. Thank you, Mr. Moon. Um, who's RF? Oh, Mr. Fresh. >> Thanks. Um, so just some topline thoughts here. Um the process um I think I was clear on from the beginning about um you know the survey work, the community conversations driving uh around scenarios um and collecting feedback um and as we kind
357of went through the different scenarios and we would get the wave of people responding to the scenarios in the week or so after every time there was like a big uptick in community feedback. I was collecting all of the feedback, categorizing it by how it aligned with our policy, uh, and then putting in like a parking lot section the things that didn't quite make a clean cut on the policy. Um and then providing that to the superintendent in the B because a that type of communication on the subject this important was foyable and b um I wanted to ensure that everybody who was reaching out to me was also making that their voice was getting to the people who were making these scenario adjustments. And so over that iterative process, by the time we got
358to scenario 4, I noticed that some elements of that community feedback had been taken, some had not. Some of that feedback had ended up in ramifications that uh, you know, sparked other changes that hadn't been part of previous scenarios. All to be expected. I also think that the community's reaction to this is all to be expected because we've not been doing it for years, for decades, for generations. And so um you know I think this is what is required and the growing pains that happen from trying to build a culture of gradual iterative improvement. It's not going to be better uh for everybody in the first year. It won't be better for everybody in the next goound and so on every five years. But over time the swings will become less severe, the changes will
359become uh less noticeable and we will be doing a better job of of stewarding those resources. I would say the second piece that I think is important that um perhaps would be a a I don't even I think it's probably going to happen, but it could be a follow on when we actually vote. Um is an actor an afteraction look at our work in this process to elevate what worked best to refine what needed additional support or additional uh work so that as this goes forward in future iterations, it also improves just as the boundaries are improving. Um, I do very much appreciate staff, the superintendent, uh, and everybody who's played a part in this because I know it has not been easy. Um, and, uh, it will get easier if we stay committed to
360the work. Thank you. >> Thank you, um, Miss Dixit. And then I'll take a quick turn and we've got quite a few gobacks. And because of the essence of time, we'll limit the gobacks to two minutes. Um so first of all I'd like to thank you everyone uh involved in this process. This was a lot of work like my colleague said. Uh I did want to say that uh we heard a lot from the community as board members too right. So we would get like email uh you know sometime from the same community over and over again the same type of email from the so I hear you Flint Hill Elementary you're happy with scenario four. Okay. So uh and we are also responding to them if they're inviting us for to PTA meeting, if
361they're inviting us to talk to them. We we we're hearing things. I in fact want to um just take the information back and pass it on to Dr. Reed's team and and and and uh Eric and you know whoever is involved and I don't get involved into the discussions like back and forth discussion. We here to understand. But um I I'll say this much. Some people have very valid points. Some are just saying it because they want to stay in that neighborhood because the grandfather when you know and some you know is like a lineage they want to don't want to move the kid out of the school. So all all kind of things we're hearing. So but 100% of the people are not going to be happy. It'll be probably we'll touch to 90%.
362Um and I think that's a that's fair. There have been some uh we we we wish we could you know make everyone happy but then it's going to be a challenge to address everyone. Um I I did have one point about um the high schools some because of the western side and I'm going to point more uh we'll discuss more in detail later but the some school are uh some students and families are concerned their school their schools are changing twice high schools um because of the western they're right now say they're in Chantelli they're said you're going to go to Westfield or south lakes but then also western So that's a kind of uh some difficulty they are facing and we'll have to figure that out. That's my only concern right now is to
363not have students change boundary twice in the small amount of time. Um so I'll stop there. Thank you. >> I I would share that concern which is why we want to extend that conversation so that doesn't happen. >> Thank you. And I'll I'll take a brief turn. I first want to say that when we entered this process and starting to do the boundary review, the policy review back when I was governor's chair, we all knew, you know, I appreciate that this many of the new board members ran because they recognized that this was a need that was both costing us money and students time both in transportation in overcrowded and undercrowded schools and it was something that hadn't been done holistically across the county in decades. So what I appreciated is that we recognized the
364need for a thoughtful, very heavily community-engaged process and a process that would be turned over to the superintendent to implement. So that way we didn't have what I believe has happened in the past with board members sort of fighting against each other and advocating against each other. um a and incremental changes that may have fixed one issue but created a ripple effect of other issues down the road which is kind of how we got here with the number of split feeders and attendance islands and um students who end up going past a closer school to a farther school. Fixing this problem that's been let linger over 40 years is not going to be fixed in one goound. I think what we are doing with this thoughtful process is making a lot of dents in a
365lot of areas and and setting up a process that can be used to continue to address this because at the end of the day, we want to make sure that all of our kids are in schools that have the best amount of capacity. We they're not over capacity and they're not under capacity because under capacity also has negative impacts in terms of having programming, robust programming available because there's not enough students for that programming. We want to make sure the students are staying in their neighborhoods and their neighborhoods are contiguous so we can build those connections and all sorts of things. I think this is a good step. I really would strongly urge us as a board after we're finished with this process to do maybe a few months of debrief and lessons learned so
366that way the next time that we perhaps are looking at this and hopefully there'll be smaller iterations because we've sort of done a bigger change here that we can look at the process because I think there's always room for continual improvement especially when you do something for the first time in 40 years. I think given that I actually think it's a really good idea that we set it up in the way that operationally Dr. Reed and her team look at it and I've actually appreciated very much the work of the B members who've been on the committee from the Bradock district. They've both been very thoughtful when I've reached out to them with questions of explaining the thinking of the committee and and the decisions that were made. So I think this is for what
367we have done here a great process. I appreciate the OCCR team um Angela and of the other teams who are on. Thank you. my mind blank for a second because I know how hard they've worked and how hard you've worked to make sure we have that robust community engagement. This is never going to be perfect because something this big and this monumental and this new by definition can't be perfect. But I'm glad that we're not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here. So I appreciate all your hard work. Um I'm looking forward to bringing this home and I hope we as board members can stick with what we agreed to when we started this work which was to finish this in a thoughtful way that's what's best for the county as a
368whole. Thank you. We'll go to two minute. go backs. Um, we'll start with Dr. Anderson, then Miss Lady, >> thank you. I'm not sure if you talked about this earlier, Dr. Reed. Through consulting is not part of this conversation today. Is there a reason for that? >> They weren't ready. I didn't personally speak to them, but they um were not ready for the data tonight. >> Okay, I see. That that seems to be the recurring theme of not being ready. And I want to raise this here because there is no reason why the park lawn and Glasco situations both of which were school board votes and mandates that were provided to them >> at the very start. It's now we're getting that that's those are one of the three sections where there were actually schoolboard
369mandates to include coats. So I I couldn't be more disappointed that that never happened. Um, I also wanted to ask the the post-mortem that is going to happen. Do you anticipate including schoolboard members? >> I think that likely there'll be a staff I don't know that I would call it a postmortem, but I will call it an afteraction meeting review and report because we do that honestly with >> big projects, big incidents. That's a I think it's a best practice. So, I know staff will certainly have that conversation. [clears throat] I think um it would be great obviously uh for me to be able to share that with you as a board and also to hear board feedback. So I think there'll be what I would call stages of the afteraction report but I think
370it's important that we leave um some institutional knowledge about everything we learn. I also am going to strongly recommend we keep a small group uh committee continuing as a advisory to the superintendent on this uh just as we have with the strategic plan. We have quarterly meetings with a core group of people to make sure that what we said we would implement we are and I think that's important and then it gives us an on-ramp a group to seed from as an on-ramp for the next uh review. >> Sure. Thank you for that and I understand kind of some of the rationale regarding the board's role but I think we could have been better leveraged and I will give you an example. the initial and uh Miss Lady talked about how spit feeders were the
371primary driver. This is what parents said. Um that is not what the parents of Mason said and that's not even what the initial scenarios showed. The initial scenarios for the Mason district centered on focus focused on Bailey's upper which is already a magnet school on Route 7. It is a school that sits outside of its boundary. That was the work that through consulting did for the Mason district. That was the only work they did for the Mason district schools because they said doing that prevented them from touching Glasco and Parklon. I think a quick conversation with someone who knows the community like we all do as magisterials, I would have said this is not the problem to be resolved in the Mason district because it is already a magnet school. It sits outside of the
372boundary for many, many, many kids. It is a magnet school. But yet, that's how they spent their time. They missed the mark. one that a quick conversation would have helped to refocus. >> Thank you. Next we have Miss Lady. Okay, we'll skip that then Miss Marin. Okay, so I have questions about phasing. Uh number one, Dr. Reed, it was just said that the board made transportation around phasing a decision about that. I can't find the record of that anywhere in our policy decision in July nor in um it's not listed. I just thought we were talking about how students are coming in. So I would like to have the verification of where it was determined that the board or people something was said just now about transportation would not be provided or what. But I
373have other um questions about phasing. You know, I think it's a lot of the conversation continues to be very theoretical to me and so like what if we could talk in like in such specific terms and and I want to say that I'm I was not aware other colleagues were sharing information or making deals or whatever, but at some point the board does have a role and I'll say in fairness I have a community where nothing changed for them in scenarios one, two, and three and now in four it's changed. or I have communities where it was changed in one and three and changed in two and four and those people have questions and so I think it is fair to bring to you all and say hey this is what I'm hearing and I'd
374like to hear what others of you are hearing when there are these areas of confusion again that's why I'd like to meet with um I'll put that offer out there um my community I'm also super proud of them I had two meetings of 100 people each in the last week respectful calm empathetic so I'm really proud of my community the way that they're turning up now when it comes to phasing I I'm most anxious about this and I really would appreciate if the superintendent made a recommendation or at least told us what you're thinking about. So I would like to aim for minimal upheaval of students learning experiences possible. Why? There's not much time between the board vote and the next school year. We vote in January. We know our students are already selecting classes
375and it's it's only six months away. It's August. Um, unemployment in our community is higher than ever and people need stability and I think we could vote on the changes in January for implementation in the following school years. You know, 18 months later, as was said by our chair, the students have been through a lot with the pandemic and these tiny humans. We need to not lose sight of that. I have a lot more questions about phasing and so I'd appreciate a go back because they're really important. Thank you. Let's we'll see the amount of time that we have left. If we have enough time left for go backs, we can do that or you can add it to your comments on the next section of course. Um we'll go on to Miss Anderson and
376then Mr. Dunn. Um so I want to say a few things. First of all, we are not acknowledging that leaving things exactly the way they are is not is not um in favor with a 100% of the community either. So even if we are making changes that some people are unhappy with like leaving things the way they are is not is not necessarily tenable either. Um the other thing is we have 45,000 bus stops and 1,600 buses. We cannot duplicate that because for me it was not lip service that I hope that we can get to a point where we do healthy start times. And if we are going to do busing for phasing, I I can't support that because I want to make sure that people that we are actually working towards that goal.
377And the only way that we can do that, in my opinion, is getting kids to go to schools closer to where they live and reducing the number of kids that we're busing, particularly for things when it's your choice as to what school you go to. So I am going to advocate that we utilize this current student transfer process as a way to understand which kids are going to be going to which school. I am going to advocate that we wave the fee related to the phasing, but it would allow us to utilize the current system. And currently when students transfer from one school to another based on a decision that their parents have made with them, they provide the transportation. And so I think that this easily can work into that process and it makes
378perfect sense for us to utilize that to actually understand what our staffing is going to be. We can create a window that will open it up for for those types of moves. We we can utilize the systems that we already have in place so it's not one more thing that people have to learn how to do. So that would be my advocacy. But no, I am not in favor [snorts] of us trying to figure out how to bus all the kids that potentially could get moved. >> Thank you, Miss Anderson. Mr. Dunn following Miss St. John Cunnan. >> Yes. Um, I wanted to speak to the strategic governance manual, uh, section B1, board roles and responsibilities. Uh, number two, our duty is to represent and serve the interests of the citizens of Fairfax County, to
379engage with the community, to report regularly to the community, to exercise stewardship of resources, and ensure that FCPS responds respectfully and in a timely manner to issues raised by members of the community. And >> that is certainly what all of us I believe have done in different ways. I believe >> um Miss Lady was the first to hold a community meeting. >> Can you can't hear us? I don't Mr. Dan, can you hear us? >> I can, but I was speaking. Can you hear me? >> We couldn't hear the first part of what you said, so I wanted to stop and see if you could start again. We'll start your time again. I apologize, but we took us We had some technical issues here. So, we can hear you now. So, if you want to
380go ahead and start from the beginning, our apologies. >> Sure. Thank you. Um, so I would like to uh refer to the strategic governance manual, section B1, board role and responsibilities. As schoolboard members, that document states that it is our job to represent and serve the interests of the citizens of Fairfax County, to engage with the community, to report regularly to the community, to exercise stewardship of resources, and ensure that FCPS responds respectfully and in a timely manner to issues raised by members of the community. I think if you examine the strategic uh governance manual closely, you'll see that um those of us who have chosen to engage with the community about school boundaries um have have done so consistent with the strategic governance manual. I believe Miss Lady was the first uh to engage
381with the community very early in the process and others have continued to engage throughout. Um, I know that I have held uh over 30 meetings about school boundaries alone. And uh so I was so saddened so saddened to hear um one of our colleagues today cast dispersions and make allegations unfounded without any evidence of people making deals. And so I will be uh considering a motion for censure to hold that colleague accountable for unfounded uh and uh spurious allegations. uh conduct and despicable despicable conduct not just in this meeting today but in other fora. So I'm putting that member on notice uh that uh she is accountable for her actions for her words and and it is completely contradictory uh to her obligations under under the strategic governance manual and that's all I'll say on
382that for now. >> Thank you Mr. Dunn Miss St. John Cunning. >> So, I remember when we all first met to talk about boundaries and as one of our school board members said, they were very happy that there were new school board members that were going to take this on. I also remember how important it was to everyone. And I had a specific situation where I worked at a school that was renovated that had renovated brand new school capacity for 6 to 700 students. And at the time boundary changes were not done because it was considered too political. At that time we all made a commitment that we weren't in this position for political reasons. We were here to do the right work for the rest of our division. So I will hope that all
383those people that emphatically said this is what we want will have the courage of their convictions and I will leave it at that. >> Thank you Miss St. Wait, I just had one thing I wanted to paraphrase what we all have heard very famously alluded to here is you can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you cannot please all of the people all of the time. We all understand that. We understand it's hard. We understand people love their schools but at the end of the day we are hold we are being responsible to the entire division. >> Thank you Miss Lady. Yeah, I just wanted to um piggyback on um Madame Chair Anderson's comments related to the student transfer process when it
384comes to the kids who are going to uh want to choose to perhaps stay at their school based on the phasing voting that we voted on um earlier in the year. Um I've already shared that for the same reason healthy start times and also just how convoluted it can be. I don't know how we can predict cost of transportation when we don't how many know how many kids are going to stay or go. Um it's you're you're it's going to cost us money. It's going to cost us more than what we're doing. So if anything's going to cost us more, I'm going to vote against it. Um but the student transfer process, I think also we need to communicate is going to have to have a hard deadline, you know. Um, and I guarantee you
385this could happen, but I'm not going to get my schedule at, you know, high school X and then recognize that, you know, whoa, maybe I could do better at high school Y, which is where I was supposed to maybe have phase two, um, that late in the game, right? Like, in order to build master schedules, we have to know where kids are going and that has to be tight. Um, and there would have to be a deadline. And and and this is part of what happened with with us doing phasing at Kent Gardens is that that the numbers kept vacasillating the closer we got to the opening of school. You know, some parents kept thinking, well, I'm going to be able to phase all my kids and then when they wouldn't couldn't, it was easier
386just to move them all to the new new location versus having them split, right? Some people don't come to that conclusion in a timely fashion to help address staffing needs. So, because this is systemwide, I'm worried about staffing. The only other thing I want to say is that having worked in at Chantilly as much as I did, um, and having that place covered in trailers, um, I I I well, I I also have coats. Um, they're definitely are schools that have underrepresented populations economically that have trailers, but there are also schools of privilege that have trailers. And so I just wanted to make that since uh you know I'm not I'm not sure I'm not not keeping score here but but you know the trailers in the modules impact all of our kids across all
387parts of our county economically and and otherwise. Thanks. >> Thank you Miss Lady. Miss Dixit I'm just going to make a quick comment about the phasing as well the the busing or transportation on that. Um and if you're doing it for one two three schools like Dr. He said and my colleagues said it may be possible for not for 50 40 schools if you have to provide transportation both you know picking and and then after school activity late buses and all that um I there are already a lot of people pay school I placed my own child in IB and uh we uh drove them to um Robinson every day for two years three years almost until he started driving. So uh I think parents do take that responsibility and take it with the ownership
388if they really want their child to attend a particular sort. I have got a lot of uh constituents saying that they will provide transportation for their child. So um I think uh community understands that that that is something they could you know they can do. Thank you. >> Thank you Miss Dixit. Um we do have a few more minutes before I want to get to the next section. So, I know um Miss Marin, you wanted a a go- go back, so I can give you two minutes for a go back. >> I love that. And I'll do my quintessentials talking really fast. Okay. Um I would like to know when we're going to have the motion for that 1218 boundary phasing motion because I'm still unclear about exactly what we've talked about buses, we've talked
389about things. Um I think that also as a board um by January, we should articulate what the goal is for the boundary vote. Is it to reduce cap um capacity inefficient by a certain percent? How much is enough? Is it to address the most egregious split feeders? Um is doing any changes at all enough after so long without any? Like and can we count as success the record community engagement? Um I will be satisfied if the boundary work um changes the most egregious split feeders. But I wonder a few options. What if we could pass the boundary change in January and implement the changes simultaneously together in fall 20277? Okay. families have plenty of time. Another option is that allow the freshman class entering high school this fall the choice to go to their currently
390boundared school or remain at their school. Allow families with currently the students that are in the secondary grades. So it's an up to two-year phasing basically, right? You have a seventh grader, you can allow them to stay at their school for that eighth grade year and then well not even two years, right? Like let's think about what the next two years look like for the set of people that are going to go through these changes. Um and then at the end of this current the current school year once the boundary for Western is identified in the spring I I would like to see us conclude the boundary work by articulating what's the next round of work. I mean this seems to be it's going to be something just like the budget and the CIP or
391I guess it's part of the CIP. Um, but I really do think we need to be thoughtful about the rising ninth graders because families have invested money even in getting their kids, you know, aligned with the pyramid, but also, as we said, it's a big change and they have six months and they're just starting to get their course selections in January when we make the vote. And I think it's the same logic that the superintendent is applying to Western High School. It's like, let's get it together, let's get it in place, give people plenty of time, and then we'll do it with a lot less angst. Thank you. Thank you. Um, seeing no other placards up, I think we've had a very robust conversation today. I appreciate the team's time and effort and so we
392will move on to the next part of the presentation on the Western High School and as we discussed there's a vote on phasing on December 18th. Um, so we'll move on. I'll turn it back over to Dr. Reid for the team. >> Yeah, thank you Miss Seismoreheiser. So, we're going to go ahead and um move to the Western High School. And um I uh I think how many slides do we have on this part? Five. Okay. So, the proposed activities here uh given we have about an hour. Uh they're posted and you can see they're colorcoded between staffing boundaries, enrollment, and so forth. Um we can go on to the next slide, Eric. This is um something that I'm going to actually draw out for you. I I think what I found I got a
393lot of feedback from [laughter] the board about the memo I sent you that it maybe wasn't as clear as it could have been and I think that um sometimes there's a limitation in what I can provide you in writing and I'm going to draw it out for you. Um let me actually just start with that right now. Dr. Reed, I believe if we don't have a mic, the people online can't hear. So when we should have a mic up here. Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. Okay. So, essentially, yeah, that's close. Thank you. So, what I'm going to do is just draw the phasing as we in the staff group, if you can move, Lisa, please. Thanks. This way a little bit. Um, and I what I want to say, and I haven't clearly been
394able to explain this, is that it is not going to be any more expensive. It's just more um, how do I It's more transparent about a runup to a brand new school that isn't going to have all its features in place at the beginning. Um, and just trying to use best practice from around the country and how you open a school. uh particularly that there's not a ton of best practice out there. So, I had to rely on phone calls and explanations because it's infrequent that you buy a school. More often than not, when you're opening a new school, you buy property, you have a lot of design conversations. You guys know how to do that. We've done that. So, here, let me explain the thinking right now. So I'm going to start just with
395these years 26 27 27 28 and 28 29 because really the how we're talking about phasing in is more so the confusion. So 26 and 27 our thoughts are to begin with 9th and 10th grade because number one those are the amount of classrooms we're going to have that we don't need to deeply touch to run a ninth and tth grade class. We know that running a ninth and tth grade class is, you know, we're that's going to be about a thousand students right up front to start with about 500 in a class because when the building's completed and you see the construction uh timeline, the building will hold about 2,000 children uh in four grades, which is about 500 students a grade. So in 2627, we were thinking 9th and 10th grade. In 2728
396we add a new nine, right? And the former ninth and tth grade become 10 and 11. So what we have now is we have 1,500 students in the fall of 27 with a new ninth grade rolling up in the 101. So then in the fall of 2829, we add another new nine. We have the nine has become 10 and we have our 11 and 12. So now we have a full school in 2829. What we're proposing to roll this in thoughtfully is to say that for the 2627 year, I'm going to be proposing a comprehensive high school with a specialized instructional pathway. We don't know which pathway yet, but likely a specialized instructional pathway that will have a traditional boundary, comprehensive high school traditional boundary with a compreh with an specialized instructional pathway. What we're
397saying in 2627 is because we're not going to have a lot of facilities. We're not going to have kids for varsity teams or championship marching bands or um full, you know, senior level in forensics or theater or FBLA. And in fact, Tom Horn is recommending we are not opening it as a VHSL school, which enables the uh students who attend to continue to participate at their base schools in any of those sports after school, which means we would for just bless you, for just the Western High School pyramids, just those five that we've talked about, we would run the afterchool bus for those students who want to do that. But we would start with this ninth and tth grade group. They would opt in only from those western high schools for that year one. Um
398because primarily, as you recall, it's Chantilli, Centerville, and Westfield whose enrollment we need to bring down. We know there may be some impact at Oakton or South Lakes at some point or not with the boundary, but we're going to allow students from those five pyramids to opt in in that first year. What I'm going to say though is that when the boundary is drawn sometime in June, likely May or June, that there'll be a boundary that'll be drawn around the school. I guess we don't have smoke coming out of the school. That's probably [laughter] a good thing. Anyhow, the school that um yeah, I forgot I drew that. Um once that boundary is drawn, anyone that opted in within the boundary will bus because we're going to bus them anyhow eventually. But anyone that we
399that opts in from outside the boundary and they'll be told that will have to get transportation either to a bus stop or to the school. So, but our 11th and 12th graders who are still going to their base school, we're obviously going to continue to bus like we always have just because, you know, the juniors and seniors have to go to their school. So, you don't have to opt in because you could still catch the bus with your other high school friends, right? It's no more expensive. It's more Andy and I had a hard time with this. It's a little It's going to be more expensive to open a new high school and have a new set of routes, but we know that because we have a new school. That's natural. But it's not going
400to cost any more to allow them to opt in for year one because we're only going to bust to the boundary. We we determine year two when we add this new ninth grade group. The decision will have to be made at some point here. Do you become a VHSL school? I suspect the answer is more likely yes, but more there will others say no. Right? That's a decision the school is going to have to come to at that point. But at this point because and I'll tell you why as a board if you pick one sport to be VHSL every sport has to be. So you can't it's not one or you can't cherry pick the you know the things you have to go all or none. So anyhow in year two we're saying it's
401no longer opt in it's opt out right because your 10 11s continue and your nines are going to be fully or not fully but your nines will be boundaried in the fall of 28. So if you're in the boundary, you're gone because that's what we're busing. You can choose to opt out for one more year because we won't have a full set of academic courses because we can't offer like multivariant calculus or some of the courses at the capstone end if we're just in with juniors here. Um and there are other courses that aren't as likely. But by 2829 when we start the last group of nth graders, it's a hard boundary. There's no more opt out. There's no more optin. We're done. Unless kids use the transfer policy just like they could anywhere. And
402if there was room, they could. Like Edison High School has the Global STEM Academy or Lewis has the leadership academy. If there's room, they can opt in. But if there's not, there's no transfer. So, we're proposing this. It's no more cost. It allows Dave, if we go down this road of opt-in only, Dave to start going to schools by December to begin talking about the school and recruiting a nth and tth grade class that can be registered in January and February based on our courses, our course selection process and we move on. So that's in a nutshell what I was trying to and what we were trying to create in all these pictures, but I think it was kind of confusing. So to recap, our plan was to have 910 in the coming fall opt
403in, but only from those five pyramids and we will only bus to the boundary once it's drawn. And that'll be part of the understanding. parents can get kids to a bus stop or to the school and a bus stop should be closed for almost anybody within those five pyramids. By 2728 the boundaries drawn, everybody's bus within boundary, but you could still opt out because if you've started at your base school, we've said you could stay and in 2829 we're done. So it gives people a two-year runup. And to Miss Marin's point, I actually hadn't thought about that for all schools, but I think it makes some sense. And I think that when we think about a runup for planning purposes, I think it it creates, I think, a a way of coming to terms with
404um the issue. So if we extend the boundary conversation because really needing to get it done by January was a false need for us because I think we've got more than enough kids that want to be there period and I don't see a purpose in like I think the boundaries we would want to give a run up and I think we would want kids who absolutely want to be there to have that opportunity um in year one then year two and three the boundaries tight. And then there are a lot of other things around DHSL that you saw staffing, but all those things are on a timeline already and Dave has opened a school before at Westfield. Uh was part of the leadership team when Westfield opened. Um so I'm happy to take any questions
405or have staff take any questions, but that was our thinking. >> I think there's still one more slide or a couple more slides. >> What are the next slides, Eric? Oh, here we go. Why don't you talk to this because speak to this. This is more of a technical building design. >> Yes, ma'am. So, this is this slide depicts a tenative construction. So, you'll see it's colorcoded across XY across the XY axis there. Uh, blue looks at RFP process. Green is looking at a design process or timeline. Uh, going out for permit would be yellow, construction, orange, I'm sorry, construction would be the bid. I'm sorry. Bid would be orange and construction is a purple or magenta color there. Three major activities here are looking at shell buildings, athletic fields and the main building of
406course and just kind of a timeline how we think we would you know meet this requirement as Dr. Reed depicted on the on the whiteboard there. Uh there is one more slide. The last slide just covers uh just some highlights. Uh community engagement dates. We've got a naming process. Uh it started in October. We held an an open house in October as well. We're talking about uh we did share some potential uh boundaries as well. We held a community meeting on November 1st and next steps. Uh we do have an oxy permit that was given to us on the end of September. The 2232 for the change use application was submitted and has been received fully received from the county as of today. And then we're fully working on the uh uh programming that will
407occur on the 13th and then we have a naming process as well. So >> part of the reason part of the reason that we're also going 910 and then 9 10 11 and 9 10 11 12 when you look at this construction schedule and we were able to begin this in earnest once we had some of the construction schedule we realized that like those um shell buildings is what for lack of a better term we're not going to get to those for a couple years. So, we really also have to be cognizant of what we want to try to do in terms of the space we have because it would cost more money to move portables in, which is one of the conversations we've talked about or trailers in. I guess they're called trailers here,
408but moving those in. If we can stay with a construction timeline, we should be able to save some costs to be able to have room for a thousand only in year one and then move to 1500 and then 2,000. We can better match up with the um the design and construction, too. So, it wasn't like arbitrarily or separately discussed. I just wanted to link those for you. >> Thank you, Dr. Reid. I think with that, we'll go ahead and start with the questions. So, first, Miss Marin, followed by Dr. Anderson. Okay. So, um, number one, uh, money. So, there's a tentative construction schedule. I did ask some questions, and I appreciate our council getting back to us. Um, you know, what is the process? Um, who makes decisions that change the CIP renovation queue. So,
409my understanding is that for the purchase of Western High School, it was not a renovation. So, we didn't change the queue. However, this is a renovation. So, it seems like it could be done when we do the CIP, but that is something and the memo from our lawyer says the queue is based on a 2008 evaluation and has not been changed since and it's very explicit that we are not to change it. Now, I know we are going to have some information in the months ahead about reordering the renovation queue, but we are here with this decision now, and there's currently no estimate that the superintendent has provided even with how much money this is going to be. So, again, I'm hardressed to vote on this, not knowing how we're going to fund it and
410where it actually fits in the renovation queue. Um, I want to share that, oh gosh. Um, I really appreciate Dr. read. You're looking at the and if you could uh clerk slide 16 please the phased enrollment plan and what I'm thinking is if it's good enough for Western High School students it should be good enough for all students. I'm even looking at the transportation. Why is transportation provided to these students but not other students who are, you know, make a choice to be boundaried? And the nice chart that you have here, a two-year phase in again, it's very planful. We know, I mean, people start signing up for summer camps in December in Fairfax sometimes, you know. So, I just think that having a measured I think it will pay dividends in our community. Yes,
411we might not be able to fix all of the the most egregious problems right away, but we're not going to solve a 40-year problem in one year. What's the what happens if we don't do all the changes or we if we allow this phased approach, then what is your proposal to look like for next year? What what's like the further plan? Um, so I will stop there. So I I will answer [clears throat] as best I can at least one part of that which is why we would bus here potentially and not pay to bus in the other 199 schools or 200 schools. And that's because we won't have a junior and senior class here. I it's not possible. We won't have facility space or the ability to open that quickly. We just we won't.
412So it the juniors and seniors I mean we have to provide them school so we would need to bus them the op the kids that don't opt in it doesn't cost anymore to bus the kids that don't opt in because we're already running the buses to their schools for their junior and senior classmates. >> Okay. Okay. Well, then I have Well, then I have the question, if we do a more phased approach over time for the rest of the school division with the boundary changes, why not allow that option for those students to go to that central bus stop? I mean, that's what happens to go to TJ, right? Or to go to the AAP center >> or to transfer I think has a >> well well so my one question is can't we use
413the same approach currently used to transport children to um level four AAP centers? I know my wolf trap kids, they go or they go to Wolf Trap to go to Louise Archer, they get a bus or the TJ students, right? So, that's one question. The second question is I did not see in the memo where I asked about transfers, anything about a fee and that was mentioned. Is there a fee for students to transfer and it's not in this memo? There's just a lot of information coming out today that I feel like like I would love a 101 to this like let's have the 101 of all the things that are involved so I know how to make a decision on it. like how much is the fee? And >> so the AAP center, just
414want to clarify that for the board and the community. The AAP center uh receiving AAP services is a um it's a legal right, right? It's like an IEP. And many states uh consider gifted and talented students to have IEPs just as students who need special supports or have special needs. So this the busing to AAP centers is in a kind of a separate category. It's not a parent choice. It's where we put situate the program. Having said that, um TJ is a magnet school too. So that's, you know, has its own issue. I think it's something we certainly can take a look at. And I know Andy um in just thinking of how to, you know, add a new school to our whole transportation system. That's a [laughter] that's a whole another uh cost basis,
415but that's part of why we're saying we're only going to bust to the actual boundary you choose for the Western High School even as early as this fall. We're not going to bust outside of that. Well, we're trying to replicate our current practice, but um so yes, I mean that was certainly the intent because we don't I also heard from several board members um the concern that doing this would cost more money and it actually it would not. Yeah, we've Well, I mean, when you look at it, I'm trying to We're only going to bust to the boundary. So, it won't cost to let kids opt in or out isn't going to change the cost because we're only going to bust to the boundary. >> I have seen no data that to confirm that. >>
416There isn't any data yet because we don't know how many kids are going in or out. But what we're saying is we're only going to bus to the boundary. Like, we're not going to pay to bus anybody from outside the boundary. So, if we had a 100 kids or 2,000, it won't matter because we're not going to bus kids from outside the boundary. I don't know how else to maybe I'm not saying it clearly enough. >> Okay, because we have to provide busing for the school within the boundary, but we're not going to bus outside of it in this plan. But >> thank you, Miss Dr. Anderson, then Mr. Moon. >> Um, thank you. The scenario that you've shared in terms of opening up with grades nine and 10, that was always what you've shared
417since the very beginning. That's not that's not a result of the 2232. I I'm I'm a little confused there. >> No, I think the way we're trying to do it one grade at a time is the 2232 because we're not going to be able to start any kind of renovation till spring. And so I think there was a sliver of hope that we could have gone 910 9 10 112 but we can't. It's 910 910 111 and 910 112 is the only >> So the main difference is in the two out years where we're just adding one grade level at a time rather than two and then two. That's correct. >> Okay. Thank you for that. Um so during the first year are we looking at a minimum and maximum what how many kids are
418we targeting to enter during the 26 27 year? >> No more than a thousand >> right but >> because 500 and 500 and I I think if we only took 400 and 400 that would be fine. Um we've had a lot more interest I think than we're going to have spots. So >> until people realize that my neighbor's not coming with me, so maybe I need to stay with my best friend. >> So those are the pain points that will change your scenario. Is there a number that you have in mind that is too few in order to make this realistic? >> I don't have that number in mind. There are schools all over the Commonwealth that are very small and very large. We tend to have very large schools here. We're the 6A division
419and you know, we may open with a smaller school. I don't think that's going to happen, but we'd have to look at what we could staff at. I >> I think we need to be kept whenever this starts to move, I think we need to be kept very current on the number of people who are opting in because if we end up opening up a school that has 300 kids because again, when we get into the specific situations, well, my best friend wants to stay at this school because they play lacrosse, there's going to be no lacrosse there. All of those things will whittle away at that goal of a thousand maximum. I do think we need to have a minimum for this to make sense. >> Um, one of my other questions is I
420I I think I I I'm not seeing how this cannot add a cost because in my mind's eye, let's say uh Marcia and I are neighbors just like we are now. We go to the same school right now. We're in the same grade. I decide to go into the new school because it's in boundary for all of us. She decides to stay where we are currently. Let's say we're 10th graders. Now, you're busing me as a 10th grader someplace new. You're busing her to the same place. How does this and we're neighbors. How is this not an additional cost? >> So, let me be clear. This is Andy. Are you feeling vindicated? [laughter] because you were just as confused as I as I am right now. >> It's not conf It's not >> Well, I
421know I'm confused. So, >> so let me clarify. >> Well, you were right. >> No, let me clarify. >> I'm confused. >> Let me clarify. There is an extra cost to opening a new high school and routing transportation to it. There is when you open a high school, you're going to add bus routes to that school. There is an additional cost. What we're saying is there's no additional additional cost to open it this way >> because we're going to have to we would have to run routes to the boundary of a new school. Period. >> And that's an additional cost to what we're currently doing today. >> Sure. And I agree with you. >> Perfect. Good. We're good. There's no I know. But there's no additional cost on top of that because if you're out
422of boundary, you got to get to a stop or the school on your own. We're not busing out of boundary kids to that new school. >> Yeah. My question was not for the out- of-boundary. Again, let's say again, we are neighbors. We're both inboundary. How do you bring me to one new school? Again, that's the additional cost, >> right? >> And bring her to the school where she if she went to the new school, that would be the first additional cost. But to bring her to the existing school, that's the additional additional cost. But that's the old cost that's already embedded because you're already running your juniors and seniors still to their old school. So she would just go to the same bus stop with the juniors and seniors because we run one high school
423route for those schools. So if you were a 10th grader that didn't opt in, you would just jump on the bus with your 11th and 12th graders because we're still taking them to their home schools for two years >> except for the ones that are again not packaged in that nice way. So, that will be an additional cost. >> They have to get there on their own. >> Okay. Well, I'm gonna need to wrap my mind around that a little bit. Um, can you speak a little bit regarding the Centerville renovation? Are we completely paused on that? So, I can speak to that. We're actually holding a public meeting next week, I believe, on the 18th. George >> 18th, the evening of the 18th. Uh, Miss Dixit, I know has asked that we come out
424and visit with the PTA. Uh, so Eric, our facilities team, um, our engagement folks, we're going to be at Centerville High School to talk about the renovation progress. I believe the permitting where it stands at this time. Um, and I'm not sure I haven't had time to check. >> Are we pause or do we have a date or you can't tell me here because that's going to unfold what you're going to tell the community? >> We're still waiting. We're still waiting on the permitting. So, we're going to be providing the community an update. Um, but with the new um I think we're ready to move forward in some capacity uh with at least a phase of the beginning, but again, I'll I'll defer that to Eric or we can get back to you in more
425detail. >> Didn't we use the Centerville funds in order to purchase this? >> Some of Centerville's funds, but not exclusively Centerville funds. There were funds from other projects that have not yet been begun. I I I would be very curious to see how all of this is um pres presented in the CIP um work this year because it seems to be a lot of moving parts. We've undone certain things and now they're starting again. Where's all the money coming from? I'd like a go back, please. >> So, we did send um a breakdown of where the funds came from, I believe, last summer prior to committing the funds. >> I have it embedded in my head right now. >> Good. there were a number of projects and um so we will provide that again. >>
426Thank you very much Mr. Moon followed by Mr. Dunn. >> Dr. Reed uh for clarification purposes that I'm going to have to ask you a couple of questions regarding the proposed phasing in I think Mr. Smith is blocking my view. Sorry. 26 27 9 and 10. I'm going to just use a a freshman rising freshman ninth grader who wants to be a footballer on the football team at Westfield High School. So instead of a Jew high school wants to up out to go to stay and go to a Westfield right there >> and then plays football 2728. First scenario, the D school becomes VHSL school, member school. So there's a football team. So if he stays at Westfield, he will be unable to play football because he is within the boundary of a new school.
427I'm asking for clarification. If he doesn't go to the school within the boundary and that it it is a VSSs member school now he cannot play football at Westfield. >> So I Tom I should have asked Tom to be here but I don't believe that's accurate. There is a carve out in VHSL which I sent to all of you about um participation when the division sets boundaries. >> Yes. and it would be when they're firm boundaries. But I could Giovani would you text and see if Tom's available to come down and answer that question? >> Okay, you can send you can send it to me, right? That's the first question. >> Second question is you talk about form boundary. Let's >> talk about form boundary which is 28 29. So that students stays at Westfield.
42826 27 play football and also play 27 and 28 play football at Westfield. 28 29 it's a form boundary as you said with no opt out. If he stays at the Westfield he's not going to be able to play football. >> I Okay. >> Do we have an answer? I know. I'm just I don't want to give you the wrong answer. >> Tom's email. >> Okay. Tom's email uh went to Okay. Um should the division consider allowing new ninth grade shoes to be I I feel like I need to send this to you otherwise I'm just going to read a bunch of >> Okay. Send that to me because I need to >> forward it to them. >> Sure. >> Okay. Thank you. That's the question. Those are the questions that I have for clarification
429so that I can intelligently respond to anyone asking me of what that means >> and I need to understand them better. >> I do. Well, I do too. And I think what I need to do is make it um a lot of this information is at the theory level I should say right and we want to make sure and that's one of the things Dave Jaggels is doing is sort of translating that into simply to understand chunks because in your example a student could also choose to go to the new western high school as a ninth grader and play at Westfield right if they were interested in um being part of the new high school. So, I think those are some of those questions and I think what Tom wants to do is make sure
430we start with a clear understanding um about about that. >> The the last thing I want to do as a board member is not be able to answer questions after casting my vote on something. >> Yes, sir. >> Thank you. >> I think Miss Lady is forwarding you the email that we sent on the 30th. >> Thank you, Mr. Moon. Mr. Dunn, followed by Miss St. John Honey. Uh, thank you. Um, I I I wanted to just opine briefly that >> apologize. I need to give the clerk's team just a minute to turn your volume up. So, if you just pause, I'll let you know when the volume as soon as they signal me that the volume's up high enough, I'll tell you to start. My apologies, Mr. Dunn. If the clerk could just let
431us know when you're ready, I'll let him know. Thank you. >> All right, Mr. Dunn. Um, your time is starting at three minutes, so go ahead and start. We can hear you now. Thank you for your patience. >> Thank you. Um, I I I wanted to just offer a quick thought that I don't think the quote unquote renovation of the Western High School is a renovation that would necessarily amend the renovation queue. I think it's more in the nature of a capacity enhancement. And it's definitely the case that there have been many schools where capacity enhancements have been performed without renovating the existing school, just adding on new um and and those have been added over time over the past 20 years without making any change to the renovation queue. And I can offer several
432examples, but I wanted to offer that as as a framework for maybe understanding how to think about this. But I wanted to ask Mr. Gordon, how what is the process for determining the scope of that capacity enhancement or renovation? Um, for example, it's not just the shell buildings and converting, you know, uh, preK classrooms to, you know, high school. There's also missing athletic fields like there's no football stadium, right? So what is the process for coming up with the full scope of work that I presume will be brought back to the board at some point? And and that's the second question. Will that be brought back to the board at some point? >> Yes sir, it will be. So I think it's a combined staff effort. So there's athletic component to it. There's a programming
433piece to it and there's a facility piece. So all three of us will come together to develop that timeline and estimate and then come back to the board. And and as part of that, will there be a recommendation whether to keep the swimming pool or not? Because that will be the only swimming pool in any high school in any school building in the county. >> The recommendation, yes, of course it would be. And I would strongly recommend we keep it. >> Okay. Um I wanted to understand if if we are from outside the boundaries gets in uh through optin will they be able to bring their siblings with them just to keep families together or is is that under discussion at all? >> I think it's under discussion to be determined. I think it uh
434if it is from those just one of those five pyramids, we would have to look at on a space available basis, but I think it's certainly up for discussion. Mr. Dunn, >> uh the Shell buildings, those are completely empty. That shouldn't have to go through a 2232 process because you're just putting up interior walls in there to subdivide into classrooms. So, can't that be broken out and put at the front of the renovation process? >> Well, Mr. Dunn, that was my exact question. and you were a fly on the wall. In fact, I uh the team all is probably rolling their eyes at me because I asked that I think four different times with an increasing volume, but I'll let Mr. Gordon answer as he did for me. >> Oh, yes, sir. It it we
435are frontloading the shell buildings on the front end of this process, but when you take it's all one site analysis, so we can't go to the county and and and split them apart. just one site analysis looking at the shell buildings looking at the fields looking at uh what we're going to do with the main building as well. So it's a whole complete process. >> Okay. Um and I wanted to ask I mean new high schools open across the country all the time. I mean Prince William Lowden Montgomery County I think is building one. Why aren't there Dr. Reed said you said there's no best practices out there but there there must be best practices. We've been opening new high schools for decades. Why can't we just uh you know follow the best practice rather
436than create a a new process from from whole cloth? >> So there are best practices for opening new high schools. I opened one in the division before I left to come here. The what I was referring to is those are generally high schools that have been planned from the ground up which means we've bought the property. We've designed the school, we've laid out the fields, we're opening the school with most of those things intact. Here we bought the school and it was a school that had a lower enrollment than what we planned to have at the end of our uh three-year design and construction adjustments. and it doesn't have a lot of the pieces that a traditional comprehensive high school would have and that makes it unique. So that moves it into sort of a
437what I would characterize as a more unique campus style and that's where there are many practices and it just pinging a variety of colleagues around the country. This is where we landed with 910 then 9 10 11 and then 9 10 11 12 um just because it this is unusual. this is not the norm to just buy a school. >> Um, has there been analysis done of which high schools in the area have overcrowding and which have the greatest overcrowding? Because I thought the most significant overcrowding was at Centerville, but we're just opening it up randomly to anyone. It seems like we're not really taking advantage of buying this property at reduced cost to address the overcrowding at at um Centerville, which is necessitating a capacity enhancement. If we could take those students and bring
438them to um to Western High School, not knowing the geography very well, um then we could perhaps eliminate the capacity enhancement at Centerville and save those dollars. >> Actually, Mr. I believe the most um the smallest footprint and most overcrowded high school of that group are Chantilli is the Chantilly High School. Uh Centerville also is and I know Mr. McDaniels talked about the number of trailers just in the Western High School pyramids would be I think 1,700 students alone in trailers. So, um, really Chantelli is probably the most than Centerville than Westfield, but there's more growth planned and more permitting in that part of the county for further growth than really anywhere else in the county right now. So, um, we're trying to look not just at today, but sort of what we're going to
439be looking at down the road so we're not moving kids multiple times. Um, but you're correct. Centerville also needs some remediation for sure. >> Thank you. Okay, I just wanted to thank presentation and and plans and the explanation you provided. It's very informative and and very helpful. Thank you. >> Yeah, thank you Mr. Dunn. A lot of it was due to the questions you asked. So, I appreciate you u being really straightforward about those. Um I do have Mr. or Dr. Pon with Mr. Horn on the phone. So, if you wouldn't mind Mr. Moon reasking your question, we'll have Mr. Horn answer. >> Go ahead, Mr. Moon. >> Tom, are you there? >> I am. >> Okay. Okay. And you guys can hear Tom. All right. >> Okay. Can you hear? He can only hear.
440Can you >> Can he see >> the screen? >> Well, he can hear you. >> Okay. >> He knows the plan. Do you want me to >> 2627? Let's 2627. A freshman choose to opt out from new high school to play football for Westfield. And the following year 2728 DU high school becomes in the first scenario a VHSL member school. Can that freshman now sophomore in 2728 stay at Westfield and continue playing football at Westfield? So in other words, Tom, a ninth grader didn't have Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, thank you for the question. And there there are two elements to this. The the first um to know is that once a student establishes eligibility at a VHSL member school, they can remain eligible as long as they remain continuously enrolled. So if FCPS
441allows a freshman to go to Westfield and participate as a freshman and we also allow that student to stay at Westfield as a sophomore, their eligibility will persist. >> Okay. Thank you. In the following year the last 2829 due high score becomes VHSL member score and also boundary becomes form meaning there is no opt out for any grade. This particular students is now a junior and he cannot opt out from his boundary. Can he play can he still play football at Westfield? >> So the his his choice to remain at Westfield and be eligible would be a schoolboard decision. Uh by VHSL policy when we adopt a boundary and we tell kids you must go to this school then they must participate at the school we tell them to go to. If through the b
442throughout the boundary process we allow kids to opt into a different school they can be eligible there. So in in other words throughout this timeline FCPS will control the eligibility of the kids in which schools they are eligible but kids are never eligible at two schools. So when we convert to it, the new school being a VHSL member school and we make boundaries not optional, um all kids who live in that boundary will be eligible at the new school. >> Kids that live outside of kids that live outside of that boundary, kids that live inside that boundary that attend school outside of the boundary would only be eligible if they were continuously enrolled in the previous school. So to your example, when the new school becomes a VHSL member school, students will have the option
443to remain where they are and remain eligible or to be eligible based on the new boundary plan at the new school, >> which seems fair fair. >> Yeah. So even in the third year 2829 even with a form boundary and as a VSSL member school a student who is a who will be a freshman in 26 27 opting out to play football at Westfield. 27 and 28 still plays the football at Westfield and 28 29 can still play football at Westfield. >> Mr. May is saying I'm sorry I was giving you a little extra time to answer. So >> the last answer. >> Yeah, I I'm happy to put you on a go back, but I want to make sure we get to our other colleagues as well. So >> Tom, can you answer that
444last question and then >> Yes. Yes. Mr. If FCPS allows that student to continue to attend Westfield through our regulation 2230 or any other process, then they would remain eligible at Westfield even in 28 when the new school was a VHSL school. >> But if but if the student once the boundary was firm chose to go to the new school because now that is their boundary. >> Correct. They would be eligible >> at the new school, not old school, >> right? Okay. Not the Westfield. >> They could choose either one. They could stay at Westfield and be continuously enrolled or become a new student. >> I think we're gonna move if we don't mind. I just want to make sure we get time for the other colleagues. >> could I just have that in writing,
445please? >> Yes, >> it's already forwarded to you, Mr. Moon. So, you should have it in your email. I think Miss Lady forwarded to you. And so, next and I just try to keep going. I'll go with Miss St. John Kunning. >> Okay. So, I'm going to actually be very quick. I know we're pressed for time. Um I know we are considering a school within a school or a path and as we start moving on this project we my expectation but just let me know Dr. Reid will we know what that path or the school within a school is going to be. So when kids are signing in on in 2627 they're taking that into consideration >> I believe. So >> that's all I wanted to know. >> That was quick. We do have time.
446I just want to make sure we get to everybody. So, [laughter] um, next we have, uh, Miss Anderson. >> Um, first I want to say that I support this timeline. I think it makes a lot of sense when we decide to build a building. Um, it we have many years that tell the community that it's that it's coming, which I think is why we had the language in the 8130 policy that said that if it was a new building that you would be required to go without phasing. However, because this is a unique circumstance, I would I would be willing to have the board provide an exception to the policy for this particular school for exactly the type of circumstance that Mr. Moon was talking about where if I have a student that wanted to
447go to wanted to phase in and stay at Westfield, that's fine. And they would continue to be able to play sports because that would be the phasing that would allow them to do that. So, I have no problem with that at all. Um, I think that that on-ramp for this school makes perfect sense. I also agree with Mr. Dunn that I think that this is covered that the purchase of this building all included the minor renovations that it's going to need in order for it to actually be utilized in in the way that it is. And this is I'm going to continue to harp on the fact that this is a huge cost savings for the entire community ga out in Gainesville outside the county. Mayfield Garden Center just sold a 38 acre piece of
448land for $160 million with no building on it. This is a fully functional school that we are going to be able to make you work for us on 33 acres in county. This is unheard of in terms of the deal that we have and I just don't want us to forget that um as we move forward and I am eager to come up with a path that will work for Centerville High School and the rest of the schools. No one is trying to jump anything on the queue, but let's not forget that the Western High School location has been on the has been on the CIP for 10 years. So, we are working towards what we have continued to tell the community that we're working towards within the bond price process that we have already
449had set up. So, I am very comfortable with this process and I am eager to to see where we land next on the on the next portions of determining programming and everything else. Thank you, Miss Anderson, Miss Dixit, and I will take a turn. I apologize. Um, Miss Lady, and then Miss Dixit. I We just didn't have you on our list. We missed it. >> Okay. Um, I'm easy to miss. Um, so I also support this timeline because it's it is a unique situation. Has been reiterated. I I do want to talk for a brief second about the student transfer process. Um and the idea of close by school bus stops um that might be practice in other places. Um but um as someone who uh worked at a school that was over capacity but
450also always had people wanting to come to it um and and being the recipient of reading what was in that transfer portal. Um those folks are not provided transportation. And and while I I I philosophically can understand the notion that if I can get to a bus stop that I could ride on that bus, but only if that bus is under capacity as allocated for for the neighborhood to begin with. Like my [clears throat] point is there's bad numbers, right? I mean, I don't know how many seats are on a bus. Let's say hypothetically there 28. If I'm the 29th kid, I'm not getting another bus because I can reach that bus stop. >> Okay? We need the community to fully understand. We do things within reason. If I have 17 kids on that bus
451and there's three kids who can get to it, well, that's reasonable perhaps that they could then ride on it. Unless the boundaried people all of a sudden three families moved in with five children that needed that bus, then they might be removed from that bus and have to go back to their own transportation. I just want that understood. And there's a lot of reference to sibling. And I'm going to be pretty pretty blunt here. I really want uh the regulation for student transfers looked at. Um, I personally believe that that changing uh high schools because of a world language should be removed. Um, because it's being used for other purposes. Um, we're fronting that that's the reason. I also struggle and I don't think people fully understand that most of the sibling transfers are at
452the elementary level and most of our overcapacity schools are our AE AP centers. And the second that, you know, hypothetically my oldest brother who's AAP gets transferred and mommy says, "Oh, may may Robin come along as well, even though I'm not AAP." Um, then that's that makes it tough, right? And that's a big transportation piece. I think we tease out the the numbers. So, sibling one I struggle with um because quite frankly, I am nothing like my two brothers other than we have the same parents. Okay. and exa and and what I gravitated towards athletically or academically or theatrically or musically was very different from them. Um and so at the end of the day we can all chart a path and I've seen it done when when we have rebounded situations. I live through
453a rebounding at Chantelli. Um and you know it was the people from Oakton did want to come the people from Oakton now don't want to leave right I mean everyone loves their school. So, uh, to go back to a quote earlier, we can't we can't please everybody, but, um, and I also do want to say that, yeah, the Q is not, well, the current Q, I think, is based on the age of the school. Um, but Centerville definitely needs some love. Um, and nobody's undermining that. I think that we need to also, and I need to say this, and I won't need to go back. I personally think we're missing an opportunity with how this school is designed. It's designed as a magnet school. uh I don't think we've given enough conversation to that but
454if it's going to be comprehensive I need to understand what percentage is pathway what percentage is comprehensive as we look to enroll a thousand in the first year >> thank you miss lady um we'll now go to Miss Dixit >> I don't know doc miss lady again I said doctor I know >> you got the stuck in your head too anyway um I don't know if you know the answer for how many students will be in the pathway right now No. >> Okay. So, um I have a couple of thoughts. Centerville High School is very far from Western High School. We can't have just moved student from Centerville High School to Western. Uh it's 25 minutes just by in a car. Forget about the bus. And uh so the students who live close proximity probably
455are the ones going you know be slated to go to Western High School uh and that site and a lot of students are coming from westfield from Hernand to Westfield they're sitting in the buses for 30 40 minutes uh that makes sense but um I think some of my community members did not like that they were moved from Centerville to Westfield or or or uh Weston in those um scenario map scenarios we had. Uh that's not going to work. Um second, I wanted to ask about the course selection. I know the students can pick their courses uh from 9th uh 9th graders or 10th graders as early as um I believe March or April something like that. But how about the pathways like you you asked when do we know the students are enrolling on
456those pathway and what type of pathways will be available to them? How how early how soon can we get that? Well, I think I think that um I think one of the ideas uh you know and whether it was Lewis or Edison when they added those pathways they added after the school was opened in this case bec uh sometimes those pathways cost extra money right whereas comprehensive schools are comprehensive schools the one pathway where we have a possible funding partner is the aerospace pathway. way. So, if we can move forward with the aerospace pathway and have a funer, that's likely what we're going to propose given our budget situation right now. Um, so I I know that Dave uh Jaggels and Dr. Pon um were certainly, you know, debating and discussing that right now and
457Mr. Smith who's convening the group that works on it. Uh but I'm I want to make sure that um you know that we have a funding source for any kind of pathway and um aerospace certainly is one near Dulles that would make sense. There may be others and other pathways. Some schools um around the country have more than one, right? So it's just but that's where we would start and we may have a different pathway for example at Westfield when it's all said and done or a different pathway at Centerville following a renovation. So, our hope would be to have some kind of a pathway accessible for students really in all parts of the county. Um, and the FAA grant we're pursuing right now that we will u be completing in January um actually is
458a three-year grant we're applying for for eventually six high schools. And my intent is to do two schools a year for three years, one in each region. But we would start with the Western High School being one of the first because it's obviously got a pallet that we can place it in right from the get-go. One of the other pathways which will not cost a lot of money at least from the uh infrastructure way other than the uh servers and uh stuff like that is uh AI. Um I think corporate partnership uh is the way to go there and I know some of the companies uh corporates are speaking with FCPS at the moment just to maybe figure out the curriculum together and what is industry needed. I know it's um it's something we've been
459talking about like AI pathway in the school. So this is something I I think if if you want students to uh to come in opt into the school and I kind of agree with uh Miss Lady here like we we do provide need to provide them some exciting courses too also like it is um you know we we want the school to be successful as uh as all our other schools are and we have been talking to the community about all these pathways. So we we just want to deliver on that. Uh I I think that's what I'm saying. Thanks. >> Thank you, Miss Mystix. And I will take a quick turn and then we can um go to go back. So we've got about 12 more minutes for today's um work session. So first
460I want to say that I think this is a very exciting opportunity. But I wanted just to kind of put back out there that this is a very unique situation. On one hand, we've had a need that has been part of the CIP for over 10 years around Western High School. And while I hear in the community enrollment's dropping, why do you need this new school? Well, enrollment is not even across the county, right? So, there is increased enrollment needs on that side and potential projected enrollment needs with the housing development and overcrowded schools more on the western side, putting my old atlarge hat back on. So, I think it one fulfills a long-standing need, two was a once-ina-lifetime opportunity. So, I think what we used to do or traditionally do or do in other
461situations is always we can of course look to that as a starting point, but it's hard to take what we traditionally do to a once in a-lifetime unique opportunity. We have to be creative and flexible and be willing to be open-minded of maybe doing things a little bit differently with keeping students at the center. I appreciate this um thoughtful phasing because I think it keeps students at the center especially on activities um for students which is so important in high school along with the academics. So I just the first thing I wanted to say is um I think as we move forward if we can continue this sort of thoughtful situation and ensure we continue to have robust community engagement and communication as we work through the the phasing in of grades. I think that's
462important. And I'm just going to um put out that, you know, this building and this school is so unique and so beautiful that I think students will be excited for this unique opportunity and the potential for these pathways. Dr. Reed, as you're exploring these pathways, I think aviation makes a lot of sense. I would just really encourage you to find a way to focus on these skills. And you know, I talk about at nauseium that's going to set our kids apart in a future AIdriven future or a future with jobs that we don't know what they are. When you talk to industry consistently across industries, what they say they need is people who can think creatively, critically think, analyze, work in teams, collaborate and communicate across industries. You hear that. And so having some sort
463of focus on providing opportunities and authentic ways to do that speech and debate um as a hint I think is going to be critical alongside aviation or some of these or AI or some of these very industry specific pathways. So I would just really encourage you to consider that and I'm just going to leave it with a little bit of personal story. I know change is hard and we want to make sure we're thoughtful, but what we are doing here and what we're doing with the boundary work is what we've asked special education parents to do every day. Go to a different school. Be bus twice as far away from your school. Oh, now we're opening a new program in this other school, so now you have to go to this other school now. Or
464this school can't meet your needs. Now you have to go over here. Oh, siblings, we don't take that into account. We've had I mean I can tell you my son went from preschool in his base school and starting kindergarten five out of the six preschool kids were based there and were told they don't belong there because there's no space and had to go to a elementary school not just outside of their pyramid because it wasn't in their pyramid but outside of their high school pyramid where they would know nobody. This we do this all the time. So I understand it's hard. I have lived it. My kids were never in the same school until they got to Lake Bradic. So, it's hard, but this is a unique opportunity and I think if we continue to
465be thoughtful about it, we can bring people along. All right, we'll go to go back. I can't read that. I'm sorry. >> Oh, um Ricky, Dr. Anderson, sorry. >> No, thank you. Um, just with my final comments, one of the things that I want to reiterate, Dr. read is I I really want us to be sure that we're being kept a breast of how many kids are enrolling for whatever the reason because I do think there is a number that is not going to be a reasonable number. Um yes, excitement, yes, but when we when the rubber hits the road, who knows what decisions will um kids will make and their families will make. I also want to lean into what I think Miss Marian shared earlier regarding the consistency of practice. If we're able
466to find some way to have this happen where we have some flexibility with students who are opting out or opting in, I I'd like to see if that's feasible with the rest of our schools in the boundary process instead of just saying, "Hey, you're on your own." If we have a stop that they can go to, that's great. And I'm glad that Miss Lady reiterated because I wasn't clear that we would not add buses at the stop. it would be if there's room. So, I think that needs to be that needs to be uh continued part of the conversation. Also, I'd like to see these costs. I'd like to see these numbers. I know we're not there yet because we don't know who the kids are and where they are, but as soon that that's
467feasible. That's important to know because I I I think it's great that you say it may not, but I'd like to see it on paper. Um because our job is to to verify what's being shared with us. Um, can you also speak to I I know in this process we're looking to reduce the number the overcapacity at the schools and I got four of the schools rather than five. Chentelli, Westfields, Oakton, Centerville, >> South Lakes may have an impact but in the final boundary might not. Right. Oakdton and South Lakes are question marks. >> Okay. We do know that Westfield, Centerville, and Chantelli were the three pyramids that we most want to impact. >> So, how will we most impact them with this opt out, I'm sorry, opt in situation? How are we going to
468be able to track that? >> We will intentionally, >> right? We I think we likely are going to have less of a most impact in the first year and then gradually by year two and then year three it will be fully impacted. But to start because we don't know exactly yet where the boundaries will carve um because there are variety if you look at it geographically it looks different than if you look at it by capacity. Um we're just not sure. So that's why we want to extend that conversation and be very thoughtful about that. Um I don't think um I think that I think it's we're not going to know everything and it's not going to be perfect till we begin to roll into it. >> So we won't know the boundary before um
469students are opting in. >> Correct. That's why we're going to David is going to m Mr. Jagel is going to be telling families if you want to opt in just like people who opt in at Edison for a specialized program provide their own transportation. um you know that yes there'll be a space at the school for your student but we can't guarantee busing till we know what the boundary is >> and then when we have the boundary >> the first year only but after the first year that because the boundary will be drawn even the 2728 everybody will know the boundary for a year so they'll you know be able to opt out there's no opting in at that point because we're again only going to bust to the boundary and the only opt in
470in year two would be if there's room by using the student transfer process So, the only families that could potentially be caught up in this are families that have incoming ninth graders this year and potentially kids the following year. They might be in in limbo because they >> year won't be in limbo, but the first year will, >> but Okay, my time's up. I'll I'll ask you after. >> Okay. >> Thank you. Um, Miss Marin. >> Yeah, [snorts] just quickly, I did put a bunch of next steps into our document, colleagues. I appreciate you taking a look at them. Um, I'm just tripped up on this transportation thing. So, we're saying if you're able to get yourself to school, if you have the privilege of a car or someone who could take you, you can
471go to this school, but if you don't, you can't. Wow, that that's a tough one. That's this Well, that's what it sounds like. If you for some other places >> I thought I heard that, but This is Let's let Miss Marin finish and Dr. Reed can address her question. >> Okay, I'll put that aside for a moment. Sorry for any confusion. Um, the question is gosh, this boundary policy includes four aspects. I've only really heard capacity addressed in any public meeting. I have not heard discussion about access to programming increasing. And this very discussion about are we going to continue to bus kids to AAP and IB and AP and all these places that's part of the reason why we have transportation issues. Now I haven't also heard from the board or the superintendent a
472commitment to explore those aspects in the next iteration of boundaries. So it just feels like it's the last minute here and all of a sudden we're talking about access to programming. Where was this conversation in any of the community meetings? because all of the materials that were handed out were about capacity and percent capacity. There was no data provided about how we're going to changemies for for capacity. And this gets to the question from this morning about what decisions are we making to increase access for all of these programs. So I just would like to be clear on again what are the goals of this? Is it to better rightsize the capacity of our buildings? Is it to take care of some really egregious split feeders? What percent is enough this time around? Um, and
473how much is it all going to cost? Thank you. >> Dr. Reed, is there anything you want to add >> on the I was trying to on our current transfer policy which has been reviewed and I've asked the team to go back staff to review it again to see because there have been some questions raised about it and they are I think it's almost complete at this point. Um parents have to provide transportation now for any transfer anywhere in the school division. Um and because our schools are all excellent schools, uh we believe from an equity standpoint that any school a student is assigned to is a great school. If a parent has it or a student has a particular pension for another school and there is room, we've allowed it across the county. I
474think since time began, as long as families provided transportation, and that wouldn't be new here with the Western High School, it's following that practice. >> Okay. But it doesn't make it right. We've already done it. We've always done it that way. That limits accessibility for kids. Again, my kids have never had meaningful world language because it's either a magnet school or it's provided. I don't want to perpetuate or at least let's acknowledge that it's something that we want to address. Let's face it. We're actually out of time. We've got one minute left. So, unless it's something that's a burning urgent issue, Miss St. John Cunning, um we're going to say just say thank you to the staff for all your hard work and I know it's been a lot and having the Western High School,
475which is a great opportunity, but thrown in the middle of the boundary work has been challenging. So, thank you for your hard work. Thank you to my colleagues for thoughtful questions. There's a next steps document, so please make sure to take a look at the next steps. And thank you, Dr. Reid. With that this meeting is adjourned.